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HE    COPPERHEAD 


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THE  UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 

LIBRARY 

# 

THE  WILMER  COLLECTION 

OF  CIVIL  WAR  NOVELS 

PRESENTED  BY 

RICHARD  H.  WILMER,  JR. 

Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2010  with  funding  from 

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THE   COPPERHEAD 


BY  HAROLD   FREDERIC. 

IN  THE  VALLEY. 

Illustrated  by  Howard  Pyle         .         $1.50 

THE  LAWTON  GIRL. 

l2mo,  paper,  50  cents;    cloth  $1.25 

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THE  COPPERHEAD. 

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THE   COPPERHEAD 


BY 


HAROLD    FREDERIC 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

i893 


COPYRIGHT,   1893,  BY 
CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S  SONS. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    Abner  Beech 1 

II.     Jeff's  Mutiny 17 

HI.     Absalom 35 

IV.     Antietam 47 

V.     "Jee's"  Tidings 63 

VI.     Ni's  Talk  with  Abner 76 

VII.     The  Election 90 

VIII.     The  Election  Bonfire 106 

IX.     Esther's  Visit 115 

X.     The  Fire 133 

XI.     The  Conquest  of  Abner 146 

XII.     The  Unwelcome  Guest 158 

XIII.  The  Breakfast 172 

XIV.  Finis 182 


602913 


THE   COPPERHEAD 

CHAPTER  I 

ABNER   BEECH 

It  was  on  the  night  of  my  thirteenth 
birthday,  I  know,  that  the  old  farm-house 
was  burned  over  our  heads.  By  that  reckon- 
ing I  must  have  been  six  or  seven  when  I 
went  to  live  with  Farmer  Beech,  because  at 
the  time  he  testified  I  had  been  with  him 
half  my  life. 

Abner  Beech  had  often  been  supervisor 
for  his  town,  and  could  have  gone  to  the 
Assembly,  it  was  said,  had  he  chosen.  He 
was  a  stalwart,  thick-shouldered,  big  man, 
with  shaggy  dark  eyebrows  shading  stern 
hazel  eyes,  and  with  a  long,  straight  nose, 
and  a  broad,  firmly  shut  mouth.  His  expan- 
sive upper  lip  was  blue  from  many  years  of 
shaving;  all  the  rest  was  bushing  beard, 
mounting  high  upon  the  cheeks  and  rolling 
l 


2  THE    COPPERHEAD 

downward  in  iron-gray  billows  over  his 
breast.  That  shaven  upper  lip,  which  still 
may  be  found  among  the  farmers  of  the  old 
blood  in  our  district  was,  I  dare  say,  a 
survival  from  the  time  of  the  Puritan  protest 
against  the  mustaches  of  the  Cavaliers.  If 
Abner  Beech,  in  the  latter  days,  had  been 
told  that  this  shaving  on  Wednesday  and 
Saturday  nights  was  a  New  England  rite,  I 
feel  sure  he  would  never  have  touched  razor 
again. 

He  was  a  well-to-do  man  in  the  earlier 
time  —  a  tremendous  worker,  a  "  good  pro- 
vider," a  citizen  of  weight  and  substance  in 
the  community.  In  all  large  matters  the 
neighborhood  looked  to  him  to  take  the  lead. 
He  was  the  first  farmer  roundabout  to  set  a 
mowing-machine  to  work  in  his  meadows, 
and  to  put  up  lightning-rods  on  his  buildings. 
At  one  period  he  was,  too,  the  chief  pillar  in 
the  church,  but  that  was  before  the  episode 
of  the  lightning-rods.  Our  little  Union 
meeting-house  was  supplied  in  those  days  by 
an  irregular  procession  of  itinerant  preachers, 
who  came  when  the  spirit  moved  and  spoke 
with  that  entire  frankness  which  is  induced 
by  knowledge  that  the  night  is  to  be  spent 


ABNEB  BEECH  3 

somewhere  else.  One  of  these  strolling 
ministers  regarded  all  attempts  to  protect 
property  from  lightning  as  an  insolent  defi- 
ance of  the  Divine  Will,  and  said  so  very 
pointedly  in  the  pulpit,  and  the  congregation 
sat  still  and  listened  and  grinned.  Farmer 
Beech  never  forgave  them. 

There  came  in  good  time  other  causes  for 
ill-feeling.  It  is  beyond  the  power  of  my 
memory  to  pick  out  and  arrange  in  proper 
sequence  the  events  which,  in  the  final  result, 
separated  Abner  Beech  from  his  fellows. 
My  own  recollections  go  with  distinctness 
back  to  the  reception  of  the  news  that 
Virginia  had  hanged  John  Brown ;  in  a 
vaguer  way  they  cover  the  two  or  three 
preceding  years.  Very  likely  Farmer  Beech 
had  begun  to  fall  out  of  touch  with  his 
neighbors  even  before  that. 

The  circumstances  of  my  adoption  into  his 
household  —  an  orphan  without  relations  or 
other  friends  —  were  not  of  the  sort  to  serve 
this  narrative.  I  was  taken  in  to  be  raised  as 
a  farm-hand,  and  was  no  more  expected  to  be 
grateful  than  as  if  I  had  been  a  young  steer 
purchased  to  toil  in  the  yoke.  No  suggestion 
was  ever  made  that  I  had  incurred  any  debt 


4  THE    COPPERHEAD 

of  obligation  to  the  Beeches.  In  a  little  com- 
munity where  everyone  worked  as  a  matter 
of  course  till  there  was  no  more  work  to  do, 
and  all  shared  alike  the  simple  food,  the  tired, 
heavy  sleep,  and  the  infrequent  spells  of  rec- 
reation, no  one  talked  or  thought  of  benefits 
conferred  or  received.  My  rights  in  the 
house  and  about  the  place  were  neither  less 
nor  more  than  those  of  Jeff  Beech,  the  farm- 
er's only  son. 

In  the  course  of  time  I  came,  indeed,  to  be 
a  more  sympathetic  unit  in  the  household,  so 
to  speak,  than  poor  Jeff  himself.  But  that 
was  only  because  he  had  been  drawn  off  after 
strange  gods. 

At  all  times  —  even  when  nothing  else  good 
was  said  of  him  —  Abner  Beech  was  spoken 
of  by  the  people  of  the  district  as  a  "  great 
hand  for  reading."  His  pre-eminence  in  this 
matter  remained  unquestioned  to  the  end.  No 
other  farmer  for  miles  owned  half  the  number 
of  books  which  he  had  on  the  shelves  above 
his  writing-desk.  Still  less  was  there  anyone 
roundabout  who  could  for  a  moment  stand  up 
with  him  in  a  discussion  involving  book- 
learning  in  general.  This  at  first  secured  for 
him  the  respect  of  the  whole  country-side,  and 


ABNER  BEECH  5 

men  were  proud  to  be  agreed  with  by  such  a 
scholar.  But  when  affairs  changed,  this, 
oddly  enough,  became  a  formidable  popular 
grievance  against  Abner  Beech.  They  said 
then  that  his  opinions  were  worthless  because 
he  got  them  from  printed  books,  instead  of 
from  his  heart. 

What  these  opinions  were  may  in  some 
measure  be  guessed  from  the  titles  of  the 
farmer's  books.  Perhaps  there  were  some 
thirty  of  them  behind  the  glass  doors  of  the 
old  mahogany  bookcase.  With  one  or  two 
agricultural  or  veterinary  exceptions,  they  re- 
lated exclusively  to  American  history  and 
politics.  There  were,  I  recall,  the  first  two 
volumes  of  Bancroft,  and  Lossing's  "  Lives 
of  the  Signers,"  and  "  Field-Books "  of  the 
two  wars  with  England ;  Thomas  H.  Benton's 
"  Thirty  Years'  View ;  "  the  four  green-black 
volumes  of  Hammond's  "  Political  History  of 
the  State  of  New  York ; "  campaign  lives  of 
Lewis  Cass  and  Franklin  Pierce,  and  larger 
biographies  of  Jefferson  and  Jackson,  and, 
most  imposing  of  all,  a  whole  long  row  of 
big  calf-bound  volumes  of  the  Congressional 
Globe,  which  carried  the  rninutise  of  politics 
at  Washington  back  into  the  forties. 


6  THE    COPPERHEAD 

These  books  constituted  the  entire  literary 
side  of  my  boyish  education.  I  have  only 
the  faintest  and  haziest  recollections  of  what 
happened  when  I  went  during  the  winter 
months  to  the  school-house  at  the  Four  Cor- 
ners. But  I  can  recall  the  very  form  of  the 
type  in  the  farmer's  books.  Everyone  of 
those  quaint,  austere,  and  beardless  faces, 
framed  in  high  collars  and  stocks  and  waving 
hair  —  the  Marcys,  Calhouns,  De Witt  Clin- 
tons, and  Silas  Wrights  of  the  daguerreotype 
and  Sartain's  primitive  graver  —  gives  back 
to  me  now  the  lineaments  of  an  old-time 
friend. 

Whenever  I  could  with  decency  escape 
from  playing  checkers  with  Jeff,  and  had  no 
harness  to  grease  or  other  indoor  jobs,  I  spent 
the  winter  evenings  in  poring  over  some  of 
these  books  —  generally  with  Abner  Beech 
at  the  opposite  side  of  the  table  immersed  in 
another.  On  some  rare  occasion  one  of  the 
hired  men  would  take  down  a  volume  and 
look  through  it  —  the  farmer  watching  him 
covertly  the  while  to  see  that  he  did  not  wet 
his  big  thumbs  to  turn  over  the  leaves  —  but 
for  the  most  part  we  two  had  the  books  to 
ourselves.     The  others  would  sit  about  till 


ABNER  BEECH  1 

bedtime,  amusing  themselves  as  best  they 
could,  the  women-folk  knitting  or  mending, 
the  men  cracking  butternuts,  or  dallying  with 
cider  and  apples  and  fried-cakes,  as  they 
talked  over  the  work  and  gossip  of  the  dis- 
trict and  tempted  the  scorching  impulses  of 
the  stovehearth  with  their  stockinged  feet. 

This  tacit  separation  of  the  farmer  and 
myself  from  the  rest  of  the  household  in  the 
course  of  time  begat  confidences  between  us. 
He  grew,  from  brief  and  casual  beginnings, 
into  a  habit  of  speaking  to  me  about  the 
things  we  read.  As  it  became  apparent,  year 
by  year,  that  young  Jeff  was  never  going  to 
read  anything  at  all,  Abner  Beech  more  and 
more  distinguished  me  with  conversational 
favor.  It  cannot  be  said  that  the  favoritism 
showed  itself  in  other  directions.  I  had  to 
work  as  hard  as  ever,  and  got  no  more  play- 
time than  before.  The  master's  eye  was 
everywhere  as  keen,  alert,  and  unsparing  as 
if  I  had  not  known  even  m'y  alphabet.  But 
when  there  were  breathing  spells,  we  talked 
together  —  or  rather  he  talked  and  I  listened 
—  as  if  we  were  folk  quite  apart  from  the 
rest. 

Two  fixed  ideas  thus  arose  in  my  boyish 


8  THE   COPPERHEAD 

mind,  and  dominated  all  my  little  notions  of 
the  world.  One  was  that  Alexander  Hamil- 
ton and  John  Marshall  were  among  the  most 
infamous  characters  in  history.  The  other 
was  that  every  true  American  ought  to  hold 
himself  in  daily  readiness  to  fight  with  Eng- 
land. I  gave  a  great  deal  of  thought  to  both 
these  matters.  I  had  early  convictions,  too, 
I  remember,  with  regard  to  Daniel  Webster, 
who  had  been  very  bad,  and  then  all  at  once 
became  a  very  good  man.  For  some  obscure 
reason  I  always  connected  him  in  my  imag- 
ination with  Zaccheus  up  a  tree,  and  clung  to 
the  queer  association  of  images  long  after  I 
learned  that  the  Marshfield  statesman  had 
been  physically  a  large  man. 

Gradually  the  old  blood-feud  with  the  Brit- 
isher became  obscured  by  fresher  antagonisms, 
and  there  sprouted  up  a  crop  of  new  sons  of 
Belial  who  deserved  to  be  hated  more  even 
than  had  Hamilton  and  Marshall.  With  me 
the  two  stages  of  indignation  glided  into 
one  another  so  impreceptibly  that  I  can  now 
hardly  distinguish  between  them.  What  I  do 
recall  is  that  the  farmer  came  in  time  to  neg- 
lect the  hereditary  enemy,  England,  and  to 
seem  to  have  quite  forgotten  our  own  historic 


ABNER  BEECH  9 

foes  to  liberty,  so  enraged  was  lie  over  the 
modern  Abolitionists.  He  told  me  about  them 
as  we  paced  up  the  seed  rows  together  in  the 
spring,  as  we  drove  homeward  on  the  hay-load 
in  the  cool  of  the  summer  evening,  as  we 
shovelled  out  a  path  for  the  women  to  the 
pumps  in  the  farm-yard  through  December 
snows.  It  took  me  a  long  time  to  even  ap- 
proximately grasp  the  wickedness  of  these 
new  men,  who  desired  to  establish  negro 
sovereignty  in  the  Republic,  and  to  compel 
each  white  girl  to  marry  a  black  man. 

The  fact  that  I  had  never  seen  any  negro 
"  close  to,"  and  had  indeed  only  caught  pass- 
ing glimpses  of  one  or  more  of  the  colored 
race  on  the  streets  of  our  nearest  big  town, 
added,  no  doubt,  to  the  mystified  alarm  with 
which  I  contemplated  these  monstrous  pro- 
posals. When  finally  an  old  darky  on  his 
travels  did  stroll  our  way,  and  I  beheld  him, 
incredibly  ragged,  dirty,  and  light-hearted, 
shuffling  through  "  Jump  Jim  Crow  "  down 
at  the  Four  Corners,  for  the  ribald  delectation 
of  the  village  loafers,  the  revelation  fairly 
made  me  shudder.  I  marvelled  that  the 
others  could  laugh,  with  this  unspeakable 
fate  hanging  over  their  silly  heads. 


10  THE    COPPERHEAD 

At  first  the  Abolitionists  were  to  me  a  re- 
mote and  intangible  class,  who  lived  and 
wrought  their  evil  deeds  in  distant  places  — 
chiefly  New  England  way.  I  rarely  heard 
mention  of  any  names  of  persons  among  them. 
They  seemed  to  be  an  impersonal  mass,  like 
a  herd  of  buffaloes  or  a  swarm  of  hornets. 
The  first  individuality  in  their  ranks  which 
attracted  my  attention,  I  remember,  was  that 
of  Theodore  Parker.  The  farmer  one  day 
brought  home  with  him  from  town  a  pam- 
phlet composed  of  anti-slavery  sermons  or 
addresses  by  this  person.  In  the  evening  he 
read  it,  or  as  far  into  it  as  his  temper  would 
permit,  beating  the  table  with  his  huge  fist 
from  time  to  time,  and  snorting  with  wrath- 
ful amazement.  At  last  he  sprang  to  his  feet, 
marched  over  to  the  wood-stove,  kicked  the 
door  open  with  his  boot,  and  thrust  the  offend- 
ing print  into  the  blaze.  It  is  vivid  in  my 
memory  still  —  the  way  the  red  flame-light 
flared  over  his  big  burly  front,  and  sparkled 
on  his  beard,  and  made  his  face  to  shine  like 
that  of  Moses. 

But  soon  I  learned  that  there  were  Aboli- 
tionists everywhere  —  Abolitionists  right  here 
in  our  own  little  farmland  township  of  north- 


ABNER  BEECH  11 

ern  New  York !  The  impression  which  this 
discovery  made  upon  me  was  not  unlike  that 
produced  on  Robinson  Crusoe  by  the  immor- 
tal footprint.  I  could  think  of  nothing  else. 
Great  events,  which  really  covered  a  space 
of  years,  came  and  went  as  in  a  bunch  to- 
gether, while  I  was  still  pondering  upon  this. 
John  Brown  was  hanged,  Lincoln  was  elected, 
Sumter  was  fired  on,  the  first  regiment  was 
raised  and  despatched  from  our  rustic  end 
of  Dearborn  County  —  and  all  the  time  it 
seems  now  as  if  my  mind  was  concentrated 
upon  the  amazing  fact  that  some  of  our 
neighbors  were  Abolitionists. 

There  was  a  certain  dreamlike  tricksiness 
of  transformation  in  it  all.  At  first  there  was 
only  one  Abolitionist,  old  "Jee"  Hagadorn. 
Then,  somehow,  there  came  to  be  a  num- 
ber of  them  —  and  then,  all  at  once,  lo  ! 
everybody  was  an  Abolitionist  —  that  is  to 
say,  everybody  but  Abner  Beech.  The  more 
general  and  enthusiastic  the  conversion  of 
the  others  became,  the  more  resolutely  and 
doggedly  he  dug  his  heels  into  the  ground, 
and  braced  his  broad  shoulders,  and  pulled  in 
the  opposite  direction.  The  skies  darkened, 
the  wind  rose,  the  storm  of   angry  popular 


12  THE    COPPERHEAD 

feeling  burst  swooping  over  the  country-side, 
but  Beech  only  stiffened  his  back  and  never 
budged  an  inch. 

At  some  early  stage  of  this  great  change, 
we  ceased  going  to  church  at  all.  The  pulpit 
of  our  rustic  meeting-house  had  become  a 
platform  from  which  the  farmer  found  himself 
denounced  with  hopeless  regularity  on  every 
recurring  Sabbath,  and  that,  too,  without  any 
chance  whatever  of  talking  back.  This  in  it- 
self was  hardly  to  be  borne.  But  when  others, 
mere  laymen  of  the  church,  took  up  the  theme, 
and  began  in  class-meetings  and  the  Sunday- 
school  to  talk  about  Antichrist  and  the  Beast ' 
with  Ten  Horns  and  Seven  Heads,  in  obvious 
connection  with  Southern  sympathizers,  it 
became  frankly  insufferable.  The  farmer 
did  not  give  in  without  a  fierce  resistance. 
He  collected  all  the  texts  he  could  find  in 
the  Bible,  such  as  "  Servants  obey  your  mas- 
ters," "  Cursed  be  Canaan,"  and  the  like,  and 
hurled  them  vehemently,  with  strong,  deep 
voice,  and  sternly  glowing  eyes,  full  at  their 
heads.  But  the  others  had  many  more  texts 
—  we  learned  afterwards  that  old  "  Jee  " 
Hagadorn  enjoyed  the  unfair  advantage  of 
a  Cruden's  Concordance  —  and  their  tongues 


ABNER  BEECH  13 

were  as  forty  to  one,  so  we  left  off  going  to 
church  altogether. 

Not  long  after  this,  I  should  think,  came 
the  miserable  affair  of  the  cheese-factory. 

The  idea  of  doing  all  the  dairy  work  of  a 
neighborhood  under  a  common  roof,  which 
originated  not  many  miles  from  us,  was  now 
nearly  ten  years  old.  In  those  days  it  was 
regarded  as  having  in  it  possibilities  of  vastly 
greater  things  than  mere  cheese-making.  Its 
success  among  us  had  stirred  up  in  men's 
minds  big  sanguine  notions  of  co-operation 
as  the  answer  to  all  American  farm  problems 
—  as  the  gateway  through  which  we  were 
to  march  into  the  rural  millennium.  These 
high  hopes  one  recalls  now  with  a  smile  and 
a  sigh.  Farmers'  wives  continued  to  break 
down  and  die  under  the  strain,  or  to  be 
drafted  off  to  the  lunatic  asylums ;  the  farm- 
ers kept  on  hanging  themselves  in  their 
barns,  or  flying  westward  before  the  locust- 
like cloud  of  mortgages ;  the  boys  and  girls 
turned  their  steps  townward  in  an  ever-in- 
creasing host.  The  millennium  never  came 
at  all. 

But  at  that  time  —  in  the  late  fifties  and 
early   sixties  —  the    cheese-factory   was   the 


14  THE   COPPERHEAD 

centre  of  an  impressive  constellation  of 
dreams  and  roseate  promises.  Its  managers 
were  the  very  elect  of  the  district;  their 
disfavor  was  more  to  be  dreaded  than 
any  condemnation  of  a  town-meeting;  their 
chief  officers  were  even  more  important  per- 
sonages than  the  supervisor  and  assessor. 

Abner  Beech  had  literally  been  the  founder 
of  our  cheese-factory.  I  fancy  he  gave  the 
very  land  on  which  it  was  built,  and  where 
you  will  see  it  still,  under  the  willows  by  the 
upper-creek  bridge.  He  sent  to  it  in  those 
days  the  milk  of  the  biggest  herd  owned  by 
any  farmer  for  miles  around,  reaching  at 
seasons  nearly  one  hundred  cows.  His  voice, 
too,  outweighed  all  others  in  its  co-operative 
councils. 

But  when  our  church-going  community 
had  reached  the  conclusion  that  a  man 
couldn't  be  a  Christian  and  hold  such  views 
on  the  slave  question  as  Beech  held,  it  was 
only  a  very  short  step  to  the  conviction  that 
such  a  man  would  water  his  milk.  In  some 
parts  of  the  world  the  theft  of  a  horse  is  the 
most  heinous  of  conceivable  crimes ;  other 
sections  exalt  to  this  pinnacle  of  sacredness 
in  property  a  sheep  or  a  pheasant  or  a  woman. 


ABNER  BEECH  15 

Among  our  dairymen  the  thing  of  special 
sanctity  was  milk.  A  man  in  our  neighbor- 
hood might  almost  better  be  accused  of  for- 
gery or  bigamy  outright,  than  to  fall  under 
the  dreadful  suspicion  of  putting  water  into 
his  cans. 

Whether  it  was  mere  stupid  prejudice  or 
malignant  invention  I  know  not  —  who 
started  the  story  was  never  to  be  learned  — 
but  of  a  sudden  everybody  seemed  to  have 
heard  that  Abner  Beech's  milk  had  been  re- 
fused at  the  cheese-factory.  This  was  not 
true,  any  more  than  it  was  true  that  there 
could  possibly  have  been  warrant  for  such  a 
proceeding.  But  what  did  happen  was  that 
the  cheese-maker  took  elaborate  pains  each 
morning  to  test  our  cans  with  such  primitive 
appliances  as  preceded  the  lactometer,  and 
sniffed  suspiciously  as  he  entered  our  figures 
in  a  separate  book,  and  behaved  generally  so 
that  our  hired  man  knocked  him  head  over 
heels  into  one  of  his  whey  vats.  Then  the 
managers  complained  to  the  farmer.  He 
went  down  to  meet  them,  boiling  over  with 
rage.  There  was  an  evil  spirit  in  the  air, 
and  bitter  words  were  exchanged.  The  out- 
come was  that  Abner  Beech  renounced  the 


16  THE   COPPERHEAD 

co-operative  curds  of  his  earlier  manhood,  so 
to  speak,  sold  part  of  his  cattle  at  a  heavy 
loss,  and  began  making  butter  at  home  with 
the  milk  of  the  remainder. 

Then  we  became  pariahs  in  good  earnest. 


CHAPTER  II 

jeff's  mutiny 

The  farmer  came  in  from  the  fields  some- 
what earlier  than  usual  on  this  August  after- 
noon. He  walked,  I  remember,  with  a  heavy 
step  and  bowed  head,  and,  when  he  had  come 
into  the  shade  on  the  porch  and  taken  off  his 
hat,  looked  about  him  with  a  wearied  air. 
The  great  heat,  with  its  motionless  atmos- 
phere and  sultry  closeness,  had  well-nigh 
wilted  everybody.  But  one  could  see  that 
Abner  was  suffering  more  than  the  rest,  and 
from  something  beyond  the  enervation  of 
dog-days. 

He  sank  weightily  into  the  arm-chair  by 
the  desk,  and  stretched  out  his  legs  with  a 
querulous  note  in  his  accustomed  grunt  of 
relief.  On  the  moment  Mrs.  Beech  came  in 
from  the  kitchen,  with  the  big  china  wash- 
bowl filled  with  cold  water,  and  the  towel 
and  clean  socks  over  her  arm,  and  knelt  be- 
fore her  husband.  She  proceeded  to  pull  off 
his  big,  dust-baked  boots  and  the  woollen  foot- 
17 


18  THE    COPPERHEAD 

gear,  put  his  feet  into  the  bowl,  bathe  and 
dry  them,  and  draw  on  the  fresh  covering,  all 
without  a  word. 

The  ceremony  was  one  I  had  watched 
many  hundreds  of  times.  Mrs.  Beech  was 
a  tall,  dark,  silent  woman,  whom  I  could 
well  believe  to  have  been  handsome  in  her 
youth.  She  belonged  to  one  of  the  old  Mo- 
hawk-Dutch families,  and  when  some  of  her 
sisters  came  to  visit  at  the  farm  I  noted  that 
they  too  were  all  dusky  as  squaws,  with  jet- 
black  shiny  curls  and  eyes  like  the  midnight 
hawk.  I  used  always  to  be  afraid  of  them 
on  this  account,  but  I  dare  say  they  were  in 
reality  most  kindly  women.  Mrs.  Beech  her- 
self represented  to  my  boyish  eyes  the  ideal 
of  a  saturnine  and  masterful  queen.  She  per- 
formed great  quantities  of  work  with  no  ap- 
parent effort  —  as  if  she  had  merely  willed  it 
to  be  done.  Her  household  was  governed  with 
a  cold  impassive  exactitude  ;  there  were  never 
any  hitches,  or  even  high  words.  The  hired- 
girls,  of  course,  called  her  "M'rye,"  as  the 
rest  of  us  mostly  did,  but  they  rarely  carried 
familiarity  further,  and  as  a  rule  respected 
her  dislike  for  much  talk.  During  all  the 
years  I  spent  under  her  roof  I  was  never 


JEFF'S  MUTINY  19 

clear  in  my  mind  as  to  whether  she  liked 
me  or  not.  Her  own  son,  even,  passed 
his  boyhood  in  much  the  same  state  of 
dubiety. 

But  to  her  husband,  Abner  Beech,  she  was 
always  most  affectionately  docile  and  humble. 
Her  snapping  black  eyes  followed  him  about 
and  rested  on  him  with  an  almost  canine  fidel- 
ity of  liking.  She  spoke  to  him  habitually 
in  a  voice  quite  different  from  that  which 
others  heard  addressed  to  them.  This,  in- 
deed, was  measurably  true  of  us  all.  By  in- 
stinct the  whole  household  deferred  in  tone 
and  manner  to  our  big,  bearded  chief,  as  if 
he  were  an  Arab  sheik  ruling  over  us  in  a 
tent  on  the  desert.  The  word  "  patriarch  " 
still  seems  best  to  describe  him,  and  his  atti- 
tude toward  us  and  the  world  in  general,  as  I 
recall  him  sitting  there  in  the  half-darkened 
living-room,  with  his  wife  bending  over  his 
feet  in  true  Oriental  submission. 

"  Do  you  know  where  Jeff  is  ?  "  the  farmer 
suddenly  asked,  without  turning  his  head  to 
where  I  sat  braiding  a  whiplash,  but  indicat- 
ing by  the  volume  of  voice  that  his  query  was 
put  to  me. 

"  He  went  off  about  two  o'clock,"  I  replied, 


20  THE    COPPERHEAD 

"  with  his  fish-pole.  They  say  they  are  bit- 
ing like  everything  down  in  the  creek." 

"Well,  you  keep  to  work  and  they  won't 
bite  you,"  said  Abner  Beech.  This  was  a 
very  old  joke  with  him,  and  usually  the  op- 
portunity of  using  it  once  more  tended  to 
lighten  his  mood.  Now,  though  mere  force 
of  habit  led  him  to  repeat  the  pleasantry,  he 
had  no  pleasure  in  it.  He  sat  with  his  head 
bent,  and  his  huge  hairy  hands  spread  list- 
lessly on  the  chair-arms. 

Mrs.  Beech  finished  her  task,  and  rose, 
lifting  the  bowl  from  the  floor.  She  paused, 
and  looked  wistfully  into  her  husband's  face. 

"  You  ain't  a  bit  well,  Abner !  "  she  said. 

"  Well  as  I'm  likely  ever  to  be  again,"  he 
made  answer,  gloomily. 

"  Has  any  more  of  'em  been  sayin'  or  doin' 
anything?"  the  wife  asked,  with  diffident 
hesitation. 

The  farmer  spoke  with  more  animation. 
"  D'ye  suppose  I  care  a  picayune  what  they 
say  or  do  ?  "  he  demanded.  "  Not  I !  But 
when  a  man's  own  kith  and  kin  turn  agin 
him,  into  the  bargain  —  "  he  left  the  sentence 
unfinished,  and  shook  his  head  to  indicate  the 
impossibility  of  such  a  situation. 


JEFF'S  MUTINY  21 

"  Has  Jeff  —then  —  "  Mrs.  Beech  began  to 
ask. 

"  Yes  —  Jeff!  "  thundered  the  farmer,  strik- 
ing his  fist  on  the  arm  of  the  chair.  "  Yes  — 
by  the  Eternal !  — Jeff!  " 

When  Abner  Beech  swore  by  the  Eternal 
we  knew  that  things  were  pretty  bad.  His 
wife  put  the  bowl  down  on  a  chair,  and  seated 
herself  in  another.  "  What's  Jeff  been  doin'  ?  " 
she  asked. 

"  Why,  where  d'ye  suppose  he  was  last 
night,  'n'  the  night  before  that  ?  Where  d'ye 
suppose  he  is  this  minute  ?  They  ain't  no 
mistake  about  it,  Lee  Watkins  saw  'em  with 
his  own  eyes,  and  ta'nted  me  with  it.  He's 
down  by  the  red  bridge  — that's  where  he  is 
—  hangin'  round  that  Hagadorn  gal !  " 

Mrs.  Beech  looked  properly  aghast  at  the 
intelligence.  Even  to  me  it  was  apparent 
that  the  unhappy  Jeff  might  better  have  been 
employed  in  committing  any  other  crime 
under  the  sun.  It  was  only  to  be  expected 
that  his  mother  would  be  horrified. 

"  I  never  could  abide  that  Lee  Watkins," 
was  what  she  said. 

The  farmer  did  not  comment  on  the  rele- 
vancy  of   this.     "  Yes,"  he  went   on,    "  the 


22  THE    COPPERHEAD 

daughter  of  mine  enemy,  the  child  of  that 
whining,  backbiting  old  scoundrel  who's  been 
eating  his  way  into  me  like  a  deer-tick  for 
years  —  the  whelp  that  I  owe  every  mean  and 
miserable  thing  that's  ever  happened  to  me 
—  yes,  of  all  living  human  creatures,  by  the 
Eternal !  it's  his  daughter  that  that  blamed 
fool  of  a  Jeff  must  take  a  shine  to,  and  hang 
around  after !  " 

"  He'll  come  of  age  the  fourteenth  of  next 
month,"  remarked  the  mother,  tentatively. 

"  Yes  —  and  march  up  and  vote  the  Woolly- 
head  ticket.  I  suppose  that's  what'll  come 
next !  "  said  the  farmer,  bitterly.  "  It  only 
needed  that !  " 

"  And  it  was  you  who  got  her  the  job 
of  teachin'  the  school,  too, "  put  in  Mrs. 
Beech. 

"That's  nothing  to  do  with  it,"  Abner 
continued.  "  I  ain't  blamin'  her  —  that  is,  on 
her  own  account.  She's  a  good  enough  gal 
so  far's  I  know.  But  everything  and  every- 
body under  that  tumble-down  Hagadorn  roof 
ought  to  be  pizen  to  any  son  of  mine  !  That's 
what  I  say  !  And  I  tell  you  this,  mother"  — 
the  farmer  rose,  and  spread  his  broad  chest, 
towering  over  the  seated  woman  as  he  spoke 


JEFF'S  MUTINY  23 

—  "I  tell  you  this ;  if  he  ain't  got  pride 
enough  to  keep  him  away  from  that  house  — 
away  from  that  gal  —  then  he  can  keep  away 
from  this  house  —  away  from  me  !  " 

The  wife  looked  up  at  him  mutely,  then 
bowed  her  head  in  tacit  consent. 

"  He  brings  it  on  himself  !  "  Abner  cried, 
with  clenched  fists,  beginning  to  pace  up  and 
down  the  room.  "  Who's  the  one  man  I've 
reason  to  curse  with  my  dying  breath  ?  Who 
began  the  infernal  Abolition  cackle  here  ? 
Who  drove  me  out  of  the  church?  Who 
started  that  outrageous  lie  about  the  milk  at 
the  factory,  and  chased  me  out  of  that,  too  ? 
Who's  been  a  lay  in'  for  years  behind  every 
stump  and  every  bush,  waitin'  for  the  chance 
to  stab  me  in  the  back,  an'  ruin  my  business, 
an'  set  my  neighbors  agin  me,  an'  land  me  an' 
mine  in  the  poorhouse  or  the  lockup?  You 
know  as  well  as  I  do  —  '  Jee  '  Hagadorn  ! 
If  I'd  wrung  his  scrawny  little  neck  for  him 
the  first  time  I  ever  laid  eyes  on  him,  it 
'd  'a'  been  money  in  my  pocket  and  years 
added  onto  my  life.  And  then  my  son  — my 
son  !  must  go  taggin'  around  —  oh-h  !  " 

He  ended  with  an  inarticulate  growl  of 
impatience  and  wrath. 


24  THE    COPPERHEAD 

"  Mebbe,  if  you  spoke  to  the  boy  —  "  Mrs. 
Beech  began. 

"  Yes,  I'll  speak  to  him!  "  the  farmer  burst 
forth,  with  grim  emphasis.  "  I'll  speak  to  him 
so't  he'll  hear !  "  He  turned  abruptly  to  me. 
"  Here,  boy,"  he  said,  "  you  go  down  the 
creek-road  an'  look  for  Jeff.  If  he  ain't 
loafin'  round  the  school-house  he'll  be  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Hagadorn's.  You  tell  him 
I  say  for  him  to  get  back  here  as  quick  as  he 
can.  You  needn't  tell  him  what  it's  about. 
Pick  up  your  feet,  now  !  " 

As  luck  would  have  it,  I  had  scarcely  got 
out  to  the  road  before  I  heard  the  loose-spoked 
wheels  of  the  local  butcher's  wagon  rattling 
behind  me  down  the  hill.  Looking  round,  I 
saw  through  the  accompanying  puffs  of  dust 
that  young  "  Ni  "  Hagadorn  was  driving,  and 
that  he  was  alone.  I  stopped  and  waited 
for  him  to  come  up,  questioning  my  mind 
whether  it  would  be  fair  to  beg  a  lift  from 
him,  when  the  purpose  of  my  journey  was  so 
hostile  to  his  family.  Even  after  he  had 
halted,  and  I  had  climbed  up  to  the  seat 
beside  him,  this  consciousness  of  treachery 
disturbed  me. 

But  no  one  thought  long  of  being  serious 


JEFF'S  MUTINY  25 

with  "  Ni."  He  was  along  in  the  teens  some- 
where, not  large  for  his  years  but  extremely 
wiry  and  muscular,  and  the  funniest  boy 
any  of  us  ever  knew  of.  How  the  son  of 
such  a  sad-faced,  gloomy,  old  licensed  ex- 
horter  as  "  Jee  "  Hagadorn  could  be  such  a 
running  spring  of  jokes  and  odd  sayings  and 
general  deviltry  as  "  Ni,"  passed  all  our 
understandings.  His  very  face  made  you 
laugh,  with  its  wilderness  of  freckles,  its 
snub  nose,  and  the  comical  curl  to  its  mouth. 
He  must  have  been  a  profitable  investment  to 
the  butcher  who  hired  him  to  drive  about  the 
country.  The  farmers'  wives  all  came  out 
to  laugh  and  chat  with  him,  and  under  the 
influence  of  his  good  spirits  they  went  on 
buying  the  toughest  steaks  and  bull-beef 
flanks,  at  more  than  city  prices,  year  after 
year.  But  anybody  who  thought  "  Ni  "  was 
soft  because  he  was  full  of  fun  made  a  great 
mistake. 

"I  see  you  ain't  doin'  much  ditchin'  this 
year,"  "  Ni "  remarked,  glancing  over  our  fields 
as  he  started  up  the  horse.  "I  should  think 
you'd  be  tickled  to  death." 

Well,  in  one  sense  I  was  glad.  There  used 
to  be  no  other  such  back-aching  work  in  all 


26  THE    COPPERHEAD 

the  year  as  that  picking  up  of  stones  to  fill 
into  the  trenches  which  the  hired  men  began 
digging  as  soon  as  the  hay  and  grain  were 
in.  But  on  the  other  hand,  I  knew  that  the 
present  idleness  meant  —  as  everything  else 
now  seemed  to  mean  —  that  the  Beech  farm 
was  going  to  the  dogs. 

"  No,"  I  made  rueful  answer.  "  Our  land 
don't  need  draiijin'  any  more.  It's  dry  as 
a  powder-horn  now." 

"  Ni  "  clucked  knowingly  at  the  old  horse. 
"  Guess  it's  Abner  that  can't  stand  much  more 
drainin',"  he  said.  "  They  say  he's  looking 
all  round  for  a  mortgage,  and  can't  raise 
one." 

"  No  such  thing !  "  I  replied.  "  His  health's 
poorly  this  summer,  that's  all.  And  Jeff  — 
he  dont  seem  to  take  hold,  somehow,  like  he 
used  to." 

My  companion  laughed  outright.  "  Mustn't 
call  him  Jeff  any  more,"  he  remarked  with  a 
grin.  "  He  was  telling  us  down  at  the  house 
that  he  was  going  to  have  people  call  him 
Tom  after  this.  He  can't  stand  answerin' 
to  the  same  name  as  Jeff  Davis,"  he  says. 

"  I  suppose  you  folks  put  him  up  to  that," 
I  made  bold  to  comment,  indignantly. 


JEFF'S  MUTINY  27 

The  suggestion  did  not  annoy  "  Ni." 
"  Mebbe  so,"  he  said.  "  You  know  Dad  lots 
a  good  deal  on  names.  He's  down-right 
mortified  that  I  don't  get  up  and  kill  people 
because  my  name's  Benaiah.  '  Why,'  he 
keeps  on  saying  to  me,  '  Here  you  are,  Bena- 
iah, the  son  of  Jehoiada,  as  it  was  in  Holy 
Writ,  and  instid  of  preparin'  to  make  ready 
to  go  out  and  fall  on  the  enemies  of  right- 
eousness, like  your  namesake  did,  all  you  do 
is  read  dime  novels  and  cut  up  monkey-shines 
generally,  for  all  the  world  as  if  you'd  been 
named  Pete  or  Steve  or  William  Henry.' 
That's  what  he  gives  me  pretty  nearly  every 
day." 

I  was  familiar  enough  with  the  quaint 
mysticism  which  the  old  Abolitionist  cooper 
wove  around  the  Scriptural  names  of  himself 
and  his  son.  We  understood  that  these  two 
appellations  had  alternated  among  his  ances- 
tors as  well,  and  I  had  often  heard  him  read 
from  Samuel  and  Kings  and  Chronicles  about 
them,  his  stiff  red  hair  standing  upright,  and 
the  blue  veins  swelling  on  his  narrow  tem- 
ples with  proud  excitement.  But  that,  of 
course,  was  in  the  old  days,  before  the 
trouble    came,    and   when    I    still   went   to 


28  THE    COPPERHEAD 

church.  To  hear  it  all  now  again  seemed  to 
give  me  a  novel  impression  of  wild  fanati- 
cism in  "  Jee  "  Hagadorn. 

His  son  was  chuckling  on  his  seat  over 
something  he  had  just  remembered.  "  Last 
time,"  he  began,  gurgling  with  laughter  — 
"last  time  he  went  for  me  because  I  wasn't 
measurin'  up  to  his  idee  of  what  a  Benaiah 
ought  to  be  like,  I  up  an'  said  to  him,  '  Look 
a-here  now,  people  who  live  in  glass  houses 
mustn't  heave  rocks.  If  I'm  Benaiah,  you're 
Jehoiada.  Well,  it  says  in  the  Bible  that 
Jehoiada  made  a  covenant.  Do  you  make 
cove-nants  ?  Not  a  bit  of  it !  all  you  make 
is  butter  firkins,  with  now  an'  then  an  odd 
pork  barrel.' " 

"What  did  he  say  to  that?"  I  asked,  as 
my  companion's  merriment  abated. 

"  Well,  I  come  away  just  then ;  I  seemed 
to  have  business  outside,"  replied  "  Ni,"  still 
grinning. 

We  had  reached  the  Corners  now,  and  my 
companion  obligingly  drew  up  to  let  me  get 
down.  He  called  out  some  merry  quip  or 
other  as  he  drove  off,  framed  in  a  haze  of 
golden  dust  against  the  sinking  sun,  and  I 
stood  looking  after  him  with  the  pleasantest 


JEFF'S  MUTINY  29 

thoughts  my  mind  had  known  for  days.  It 
was  almost  a  shock  to  remember  that  he  was 
one  of  the  abhorrent  and  hated  Hagadorns. 

And  his  sister,  too.  It  was  not  at  all  easy 
to  keep  one's  loathing  up  to  the  proper  pitch 
where  so  nice  a  girl  as  Esther  Hagadorn  was 
its  object.  She  was  years  and  years  my 
senior — she  was  even  older  than  "  Ni  "  — 
and  had  been  my  teacher  for  the  past  two 
winters.  She  had  never  spoken  to  me  save 
across  that  yawning  gulf  which  separates 
little  barefooted  urchins  from  tall  young 
women,  with  long  dresses  and  their  hair  done 
up  in  a  net,  and  I  could  hardly  be  said 
to  know  her  at  all.  Yet  now,  perversely 
enough,  I  could  think  of  nothing  but  her 
manifest  superiority  to  all  the  farm  girls 
round  about.  She  had  been  to  a  school  in 
some  remote  city,  where  she  had  relations. 
Her  hands  were  fabulously  white,  and  even 
on  the  hottest  of  days  her  dresses  rustled 
pleasantly  with  starched  primness.  People 
talked  about  her  singing  at  church  as  some- 
thing remarkable ;  to  my  mind,  the  real 
music  was  when  she  just  spoke  to  you,  even 
if  it  was  no  more  than  "  Good-morning, 
Jimmy ! " 


30  THE   COPPERHEAD 

I  clambered  up  on  the  window-sill  of  the 
school-house,  to  make  sure  there  was  no  one 
inside,  and  then  set  off  down  the  creek-road 
toward  the  red  or  lower  bridge.  Milking- 
time  was  about  over,  and  one  or  two  teams 
passed  me  on  the  way  to  the  cheese-factory, 
the  handles  of  the  cans  rattling  as  they  went, 
and  the  low  sun  throwing  huge  shadows  of 
drivers  and  horses  sprawling  eastward  over 
the  stubble-field.  I  cut  across  lots  to  avoid 
the  cheese-factory  itself,  with  some  vague 
feeling  that  it  was  not  a  fitting  spectacle  for 
anyone  who  lived  on  the  Beech  farm. 

A  few  moments  brought  me  to  the  bank  of 
the  wandering  stream  below  the  factory,  but 
so  near  that  I  could  hear  the  creaking  of  the 
chain  drawing  up  the  cans  over  the  tackle, 
or  as  we  called  it,  the  "  teekle."  The 
willows  under  which  I  walked  stretched 
without  a  break  from  the  clump  by  the 
factory  bridge.  And  now,  low  and  behold  ! 
beneath  still  other  of  these  willows,  farther 
down  the  stream,  whom  should  I  see  stroll- 
ing together  but  my  school-teacher  and  the 
delinquent  Jeff ! 

Young  Beech  bore  still  the  fish-pole  I  had 
seen   him   take    from    our  shed  some  hours 


JEFF'S  MUTINY  31 

earlier,  but  the  line  twisted  round  it  was 
very  white  and  dry.  He  was  extremely  close 
to  the  girl,  and  kept  his  head  bent  down  over 
her  as  they  sauntered  along  the  meadow-path. 
They  seemed  not  to  be  talking,  but  just  idly 
drifting  forward  like  the  deep  slow  water 
beside  them.  I  had  never  realized  before 
how  tall  Jeff  was.  Though  the  school-ma'am 
always  seemed  to  me  of  an  exceeding  stature, 
here  was  Jeff  rounding  his  shoulders  and 
inclining  his  neck  in  order  to  look  under  her 
broad-brimmed  Leghorn  hat. 

There  could  be  no  imaginable  excuse  for 
my  not  overtaking  them.  Instinct  prompted 
me  to  start  up  a  whistling  tune  as  I  advanced 

—  a  casual  and  indolently  unobtrusive  tune 

—  at  sound  of  which  Jeff  straightened  him- 
self, and  gave  his  companion  a  little  more 
room  on  the  path.  In  a  moment  or  two  he 
stopped,  and  looked  intently  over  the  bank 
into  the  water,  as  if  he  hoped  it  might  turn 
out  to  be  a  likely  place  for  fish.  And  the 
school-ma'am,  too,  after  a  few  aimless  steps, 
halted  to  help  him  look. 

"  Abner  wants  you  to  come  right  straight 
home ! "  was  the  form  in  which  my  message 
delivered  itself  when  I  had  come  close  up  to 
them. 


32  THE    COPPERHEAD 

They  both  shifted  their  gaze  from  the 
sluggish  stream  below  to  me  upon  the  in- 
stant. Then  Esther  Hagadorn  looked  away, 
but  Jeff  —  good,  big,  honest  Jeff,  who  had 
been  like  a  fond  elder  brother  to  me  since  I 
could  remember  —  knitted  his  brows  and  re- 
garded me  with  something  like  a  scowl. 

"Did  pa  send  you  to  say  that?"  he  de- 
manded, holding  my  eye  with  a  glance  of 
such  stern  inquiry  that  I  could  only  nod  my 
head  in  confusion. 

"  An'  he  knew  that  you'd  find  me  here,  did 
he?" 

"  He  said  either  at  the  school-house  or 
around  here  somewhere,"  I  admitted,  weakly. 

"An'  there  ain't  nothin'  the  matter  at  the 
farm  ?  He  don't  want  me  for  nothin' 
special?"  pursued  Jeff,  still  looking  me 
through  and  through. 

"  He  didn't  say,"  I  made  hesitating  answer, 
but  for  the  life  of  me,  I  could  not  keep 
from  throwing  a  tell-tale  look  in  the  direc- 
tion of  his  companion  in  the  blue  gingham 
dress. 

A  wink  could  not  have  told  Jeff  more. 
He  gave  a  little  bitter  laugh,  and  stared 
above  my  head  at  the  willow-plumes  for  a 


JEFF'S  MUTINY  33 

minute's  meditation.  Then  be  tossed  his 
fish-pole  over  to  me  and  laughed  again. 

"  Keep  that  for  yourself,  if  you  want  it," 
he  said,  in  a  voice  not  quite  his  own,  but 
robustly  enough.  "  I  sha'n't  need  it  any 
more.     Tell  pa  I  ain't  a-comin'  !  " 

"  Oh,  Tom ! "  Esther  broke  in,  anxiously, 
"would  you  do  that?" 

He  held  up  his  hand  with  a  quiet,  master- 
ful gesture,  as  if  she  were  the  pupil  and  he 
the  teacher,  "  Tell  him,"  he  went  on,  the  tone 
falling  now  strong  and  true,  "  tell  him  and 
ma  that  I'm  goin'  to  Tecumseh  to-night  to 
enlist.  If  they're  willin'  to  say  good-by,  they 
can  let  me  know  there,  and  I'll  manage  to 
slip  back  for  the  day.  If  they  ain't  willin' — 
why,  they  —  they  needn't  send  word ;  that's 
all." 

Esther  had  come  up  to  him,  and  held  his 
arm  now  in  hers. 

"  You're  wrong  to  leave  them  like  that ! " 
she  pleaded,  earnestly,  but  Jeff  shook  his 
head. 

"  You  don't  know  him !  "  was  all  he  said. 

In  another  minute  I  had  shaken  hands  with 
Jeff,  and  had  started  on  my  homeward  way, 
with  his  parting  "  Good-by,  youngster  !  "  be- 


34  THE    COPPERHEAD 

numbing  my  ears.  When,  after  a  while,  I 
turned  to  look  back,  they  were  still  standing 
where  I  had  left  them,  gazing  over  the  bank 
into  the  water. 

Then,  as  I  trudged  onward  once  more,  I 
began  to  quake  at  the  thought  of  how 
Farmer  Beech  would  take  the  news. 


CHAPTER   III 

ABSALOM 

Once,  in  the  duck-season,  as  I  lay  hidden 
among  the  marsh-reeds  with  an  older  boy,  a 
crow  passed  over  us,  flying  low.  Looking  up 
at  him,  I  realized  for  the  first  time  how  beau- 
tiful a  creature  was  this  common  black  thief 
of  ours  —  how  splendid  his  strength  and  the 
sheen  of  his  coat,  how  proudly  graceful  the 
sweep  and  curves  of  his  great  slow  wings. 
The  boy  beside  me  fired,  and  in  a  flash  what 
I  had  been  admiring  changed  —  even  as  it 
stopped  headlong  in  mid-air  —  into  a  hideous 
thing,  an  evil  confusion  of  jumbled  feathers. 
The  awful  swiftness  of  that  transition  from 
beauty  and  power  to  hateful  carrion  haunted 
me  for  a  long  time. 

I  half  expected  that  Abner  Beech  would 
crumple  up  in  some  such  distressing  way,  all 
of  a  sudden,  when  I  told  him  that  his  son  Jeff 
wag  in  open  rebellion,  and  intended  to  go  off 
and  enlist.  It  was  incredible  to  the  senses 
that  any  member  t)f  the  household  should  set 
35 


36  THE    COPPERHEAD 

at  defiance  the  patriarchal  will  of  its  head. 
But  that  the  offence  should  come  from  placid, 
slow-witted,  good-natured  Jeff,  and  that  it 
should  involve  the  appearance  of  a  Beech  in 
a  blue  uniform  —  these  things  staggered  the 
imagination.  It  was  clear  that  something 
prodigious  must  happen. 

As  it  turned  out,  nothing  happened  at  all. 
The  farmer  and  his  wife  sat  out  on  the  ve- 
randa, as  was  their  wont  of  a  summer  evening, 
rarely  exchanging  a  word,  but  getting  a  rest- 
ful sort  of  satisfaction  in  together  surveying 
their  barns  and  haystacks  and  the  yellow- 
brown  stretch  of  fields  beyond. 

"  Jeff  says  he's  goin'  to-night  to  Tecumseh, 
an'  he's  goin'  to  enlist,  an'  if  you  want  him  to 
run  over  to  say  good-by  you're  to  let  him 
know  there." 

I  leant  upon  my  newly-acquired  fish-pole 
for  support,  as  I  unburdened  myself  of  these 
sinister  tidings.  The  old  pair  looked  at  me 
in  calm-eyed  silence,  as  if  I  had  related  the 
most  trivial  of  village  occurrences.  Neither 
moved  a  muscle  nor  uttered  a  sound,  but  just 
gazed,  till  it  felt  as  if  their  eyes  were  burn- 
ing holes  into  me. 

"  That's  what  he  said,"  I*  repeated,  after  a 


ABSALOM  37 

pause,  to  mitigate  the  embarrassment  of  that 
dumb  steadfast  stare. 

The  mother  it  was  who  spoke  at  last. 
"You'd  better  go  round  and  get  your  sup- 
per," she  said,  quietly. 

The  table  was  spread,  as  usual,  in  the  big, 
low-ceilinged  room  which  during  the  winter 
was  used  as  a  kitchen.  What  was  unusual 
was  to  discover  a  strange  man  seated  alone  in 
his  shirt-sleeves  at  this  table,  eating  his  sup- 
per. As  I  took  my  chair,  however,  I  saw  that 
he  was  not  altogether  a  stranger.  I  recog- 
nized in  him  the  little  old  Irishman  who  had 
farmed  Ezra  Tracy's  beaver-meadow  the  pre- 
vious year  on  shares,  and  done  badly,  and  had 
since  been  hiring  out  for  odd  jobs  at  hoeing 
and  haying.  He  had  lately  lost  his  wife,  I 
recalled  now,  and  lived  alone  in  a  tumble- 
down old  shanty  beyond  Parker's  saw-mill. 
He  had  come  to  us  in  the  spring,  I  remem- 
bered, when  the  brindled  calf  was  born,  to 
beg  a  pail  of  what  he  called  "  basteings,"  and 
I  speculated  in  my  mind  whether  it  was  this 
repellent  mess  that  had  killed  his  wife. 
Above  all  these  thoughts  rose  the  impression 
that  Abner  must  have  decided  to  do  a  heap 
of  ditching  and  wall-building,  to  have  hired  a 


38  THE    COPPERHEAD 

new  hand  in  this  otherwise  slack  season  —  and 
at  this  my  back  began  to  ache  prophetically. 

"  How  are  yeh !  "  the  new-comer  remarked, 
affably,  as  I  sat  down  and  reached  for  the 
bread.  "  An'  did  yeh  see  the  boys  march 
away?     An'  had  they  a  drum  wid  'em? " 

"  What  boys  ?  "  I  asked,  in  blank  ignorance 
as  to  what  he  was  at. 

"  I'm  told  there's  a  baker's  dozen  of  'em 
gone,  more  or  less,"  he  replied.  "  Well,  glory 
be  to  the  Lord,  'tis  an  ill  wind  blows  nobody 
good.  Here  am  I  aitin'  butter  on  my  bread, 
an'  cheese  on  top  o'  that." 

I  should  still  have  been  in  the  dark,  had 
not  one  of  the  hired  girls,  Janey  Wilcox, 
come  in  from  the  butter-room,  to  ask  me  in 
turn  much  the  same  thing,  and  to  add  the 
explanation  that  a  whole  lot  of  the  young 
men  of  the  neighborhood  had  privately  ar- 
ranged among  themselves  to  enlist  together 
as  soon  as  the  harvesting  was  over,  and  had 
this  day  gone  off  in  a  body.  Among  them, 
I  learned  now,  were  our  two  hired  men, 
Warner  Pitts  and  Ray  Watkins.  This,  then, 
accounted  for  the  presence  of  the  Irishman. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  had  been  no 
secrecy  about  the  thing  save  with  the  con- 


ABSALOM  39 

tingent  which  our  household  furnished,  and 
that  was  only  because  of  the  fear  which 
Abner  Beech  inspired.  His  son  and  his  ser- 
vants alike  preferred  to  hook  it,  rather  than 
explain  their  patriotic  impulses  to  him.  But 
naturally  enough,  our  farm-girls  took  it  for 
granted  that  all  the  others  had  gone  in  the 
same  surreptitious  fashion,  and  this  threw  an 
air  of  fascinating  mystery  about  the  whole 
occurrence.  They  were  deeply  surprised  that 
I  should  have  been  down  past  the  Corners, 
and  even  beyond  the  cheese-factory,  and  seen 
nothing  of  these  extraordinary  martial  prep- 
arations ;  and  I  myself  was  ashamed  of  it. 

Opinions  differed,  I  remember,  as  to  the 
behavior  of  our  two  hired  men.  "  Till " 
Babcock  and  the  Underwood  girl  defended 
them,  but  Janey  took  the  other  side,  not 
without  various  unpleasant  personal  insinua- 
tions, and  the  Irishman  and  I  were  outspoken 
in  their  condemnation.  But  nobody  said  a 
word  about  Jeff,  though  it  was  plain  enough 
that  everyone  knew. 

Dusk  fell  while  we  still  talked  of  these 
astounding  events  —  my  thoughts  meantime 
dividing  themselves  between  efforts  to  realize 
these  neighbors  of  ours  as  soldiers  on  the 


40  THE    COPPERHEAD 

tented  field,  and  uneasy  speculation  as  to 
whether  I  should  at  last  get  a  bed  to  myself 
or  be  expected  to  sleep  with  the  Irishman. 

Janey  Wilcox  had  taken  the  lamp  into  the 
living-room.  She  returned  now,  with  an 
uplifted  hand  and  a  face  covered  over  with 
lines  of  surprise. 

"  You're  to  all  of  you  come  in,"  she  whis- 
pered, impressively.  "  Abner's  got  the  Bible 
down.  We're  goin'  to  have  fam'ly  prayers, 
or  somethin'." 

With  one  accord  we  looked  at  the  Irish- 
man. The  question  had  never  before  arisen 
on  our  farm,  but  we  all  knew  about  other 
cases,  in  which  Catholic  hands  held  aloof 
from  the  household's  devotions.  There  were 
even  stories  of  their  refusal  to  eat  meat  on 
some  one  day  of  the  week,  but  this  we  hardly 
brought  ourselves  to  credit.  Our  surprise  at 
the  fact  that  domestic  religious  observances 
were  to  be  resumed  under  the  Beech  roof- 
tree  —  where  they  had  completely  lapsed 
ever  since  the  trouble  at  the  church  —  was 
as  nothing  compared  with  our  curiosity  to 
see  what  the  new-comer  would  do. 

What  he  did  was  to  get  up  and  come 
along  with  the  rest  of  us,  quite  as  a  matter 


ABSALOM  41 

of  course.  I  felt  sure  that  he  could  not  have 
understood  what  was  going  on. 

We  filed  into  the  living-room.  The 
Beeches  had  come  in  and  shut  the  veranda 
door,  and  "  M'rye  "  was  seated  in  her  rock- 
ing-chair, in  the  darkness  beyond  the  book- 
case. Her  husband  had  the  big  book  open 
before  him  on  the  table  ;  the  lamp-light  threw 
the  shadow  of  his  long  nose  down  into  the 
gray  of  his  beard  with  a  strange  effect  of 
fierceness.  His  lips  were  tight-set  and  his 
shaggy  brows  drawn  into  a  commanding 
frown,  as  he  bent  over  the  pages. 

Abner  did  not  look  up  till  we  had  taken 
our  seats.  Then  he  raised  his  eyes  toward 
the  Irishman. 

"  I  don't  know,  Hurley,"  he  said,  in  a 
grave,  deep-booming  voice,  "  whether  you 
feel  it  right  for  you  to  join  us  —  we  bein' 
Protestants  —  " 

"  Ah,  it's  all  right,  sir,"  replied  Hurley, 
reassuringly,  "I'll  take  no  harm  by  it." 

A  minute's  silence  followed  upon  this  mag- 
nanimous declaration.  Then  Abner,  clearing 
his  throat,  began  solemnly  to  read  the  story 
of  Absalom's  revolt.  He  had  the  knack,  not 
uncommon  in  those  primitive  class-meeting 


42  THE    COPPERHEAD 

days,  of  making  his  strong,  low-pitched  voice 
quaver  and  wail  in  the  most  tear-compelling 
fashion  when  he  read  from  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. You  could  hardly  listen  to  him  go- 
ing through  even  the  genealogical  tables 
of  Chronicles  dry-eyed.  His  Jeremiah  and 
Ezekiel  were  equal  to  the  funeral  of  a  well- 
beloved  relation. 

This  night  he  read  as  I  had  never  heard 
him  read  before.  The  whole  grim  story  of 
the  son's  treason  and  final  misadventure,  of 
the  ferocious  battle  in  the  wood  of  Ephraim, 
of  Joab's  savagery,  and  of  the  rival  runners, 
made  the  air  vibrate  about  us,  and  took  pos- 
session of  our  minds  and  kneaded  them  like 
dough,  as  we  sat  in  the  mute  circle  in  the  old 
living-room.  From  my  chair  I  could  see 
Hurley  without  turning  my  head,  and  the 
spectacle  of  excitement  he  presented  —  bend- 
ing forward  with  dropped  jaw  and  wild, 
glistening  gray  eyes,  a  hand  behind  his  ear 
to  miss  no  syllable  of  this  strange  new  tale 
—  only  added  to  the  effect  it  produced  on 
me. 

Then  there  came  the  terrible  picture  of 
the  King's  despair.  I  had  trembled  as  we 
neared  this  part,  foreseeing  what  heart-wring- 


ABSALOM  43 

ing  anguish  Abner,  in  his  present  mood, 
would  give  to  that  cry  of  the  stricken  father 
— "  O  my  son  Absalom,  my  son,  my  son 
Absalom !  Would  God  I  had  died  for  thee, 
O  Absalom,  my  son,  my  son  !  "  To  my  great 
surprise,  he  made  very  little  of  it.  The 
words  came  coldly,  almost  contemptuously, 
so  that  the  listener  could  not  but  feel  that 
David's  lamentations  were  out  of  place,  and 
might  better  have  been  left  unuttered. 

But  now  the  farmer,  leaping  over  into  the 
next  chapter,  brought  swart,  stalwart,  blood- 
stained Joab  on  the  scene  before  us,  and  in 
an  instant  we  saw  why  the  King's  outburst 
of  mourning  had  fallen  so  flat  upon  our  ears. 
Abner  Beech's  voice  rose  and  filled  the  room 
with  its  passionate  fervor  as  he  read  out 
Joab's  speech  —  wherein  the  King  is  roundly 
told  that  his  son  was  a  worthless  fellow,  and 
was  killed  not  a  bit  too  soon,  and  that  for 
the  father  to  thus  publicly  lament  him  is  to 
put  to  shame  all  his  household  and  his  loyal 
friends  and  servants. 

While  these  sonorous  words  of  protest 
against  paternal  weakness  still  rang  in  the 
air,  Abner  abruptly  closed  the  book  with  a 
snap.     We  looked  at  him  and  at  one  another 


44  THE    COPPERHEAD 

for  a  bewildered  moment,  and  then  "  Till " 
Babcock  stooped  as  if  to  kneel  by  her  chair, 
but  Janey  nudged  her,  and  we  all  rose  and 
made  our  way  silently  out  again  into  the 
kitchen.  It  had  been  apparent  enough  that 
no  spirit  of  prayer  abode  in  the  farmer's 
breast. 

"  'Twas  a  fine  bold  sinsible  man,  that 
Job ! "  remarked  Hurley  to  me,  when  the 
door  was  closed  behind  us,  and  the  women 
had  gone  off  to  talk  the  scene  over  among 
themselves  in  the  butter-room.  "  Would  it 
be  him  that  had  thim  lean  turkeys  ?  " 

With  some  difficulty  I  made  out  his  mean- 
ing. "  Oh,  no  ! "  I  exclaimed,  "  the  man 
Abner  read  about  was  Jo-ab,  not  Job.  They 
were  quite  different  people." 

"I  thought  as  much,"  replied  the  Irishman. 
"  'Twould  not  be  in  so  grand  a  man's  nature 
to  let  his  fowls  go  hungry.  And  do  we  be 
hearing  such  tales  every  night  ?  " 

"  Maybe  Abner  '11  keep  on,  now  he's  started 
again,"  I  said.  "  We  ain't  had  any  Bible- 
reading  before  since  he  had  his  row  down  at 
the  church,  and  we  left  off  going." 

Hurley  displayed  such  a  lively  interest  in 
this  matter  that  I  went  over  it  pretty  fully, 


ABSALOM  45 

setting  forth  Aimer's  position  and  the  intol- 
erable provocations  which  had  been  forced 
upon  him.  It  took  him  a  long  time  to  grasp 
the  idea  that  in  Protestant  gatherings  not 
only  the  pastor  spoke,  but  the  class-leaders 
and  all  others  who  were  conscious  of  a  call 
might  have  their  word  as  well,  and  that  in 
this  way  even  the  lowliest  and  meanest  of 
the  farmer's  neighbors  had  been  able  to 
affront  him  in  the  church  itself. 

"  Too  many  cooks  spoil  the  broth,"  was 
his  comment  upon  this.  "  'Tis  far  better  to 
hearken  to  one  man  only.  If  he's  right, 
you're  right.  If  he's  wrong,  why,  thin, 
there  ye  have  him  in  front  of  ye  for  protec- 
tion." 

Bed-time  came  soon  after,  and  Mrs.  Beech 
appeared  in  her  nightly  round  of  the  house 
to  see  that  the  doors  were  all  fastened.  The 
candle  she  bore  threw  up  a  flaring  yellow 
light  upon  her  chin,  but  made  the  face  above 
it  by  contrast  still  darker  and  more  saturnine. 
She  moved  about  in  erect  impassiveness, 
trying  the  bolts  and  the  window  catches, 
and  went  away  again,  having  said  never  a 
word.  I  had  planned  to  ask  her  if  I  might 
now  have  a  bed  to  myself,  but  somehow  my 


46  THE    COPPERHEAD 

courage  failed  me,  so  stern  and  majestic  was 
her  aspect. 

I  took  the  desired  boon  without  asking, 
and  dreamed  of  her  as  a  darkling  and  relent- 
less Joab  in  petticoats,  slaying  her  own  son 
Jeff  as  he  hung  by  his  hay-colored  hair  in 
one  of  the  apple-trees  of  our  orchard. 


CHAPTER   IV 


ANTIETAM 


On  all  the  other  farms  roundabout,  this 
mid-August  was  a  slack  season.  The  hired 
men  and  boys  did  a  little  early  fruit-picking, 
a  little  berrying,  a  little  stone-drawing,  but 
for  the  most  part  they  could  be  seen  idling 
about  the  woods  or  along  the  river  down 
below  Juno  Mills,  with  gun  or  fish-pole. 
Only  upon  the  one  farm  whose  turn  it  was 
that  week  to  be  visited  by  the  itinerant 
threshing-machine,  was  any  special  activity 
visible. 

It  was  well  known,  however,  that  we  were 
not  to  get  the  threshing-machine  at  all.  How 
it  was  managed,  I  never  understood.  Per- 
haps the  other  farmers  combined  in  some 
way  to  over-awe  or  persuade  the  owners  of 
the  machine  into  refusing  it  to  Abner  Beech. 
More  likely  he  scented  the  chance  of  a  re- 
fusal and  was  too  proud  to  put  himself  in  its 
way  by  asking.  At  all  events,  we  three  — 
Abner,  Hurley,  and  I  —  had  to  manage  the 
47 


48  THE    COPPERHEAD 

threshing  ourselves,  on  the  matched  wood 
floor  of  the  carriage  barn.  All  the  fishing 
I  did  that  year  was  in  the  prolific  but  unsub- 
stantial waters  of  dreamland. 

I  did  not  work  much,  it  is  true,  with  the 
flail,  but  I  lived  all  day  in  an  atmosphere 
choked  with  dust  and  chaff,  my  ears  deafened 
with  the  ceaseless  whack !  whack !  of  the 
hard  wood  clubs,  bringing  on  fresh  shocks 
of  grain,  and  acting  as  general  helper. 

By  toiling  late  and  early  we  got  this  task 
out  of  the  way  just  when  the  corn  was  ready 
to  cut.  This  great  job  taxed  all  the  energies 
of  the  two  men,  the  one  cutting,  the  other 
stacking,  as  they  went.  My  own  share  of 
the  labor  was  to  dig  the  potatoes  and  pick 
the  eating-apples  —  a  quite  portentous  enough 
undertaking  for  a  lad  of  twelve.  All  this 
kept  me  very  much  to  myself.  There  was 
no  chance  to  talk  during  the  day,  and  at 
night  I  was  glad  to  drag  my  tired  limbs  off 
to  bed  before  the  girls  had  fairly  cleared 
the  supper  things  away.  A  weekly  news- 
paper —  The  World  —  came  regularly  to  the 
post-office  at  the  Corners  for  us,  but  we  were 
so  over-worked  that  often  it  lay  there  for 
weeks  at  a  time,  and   even  when   someone 


ANTIETAM  49 

went  after  it,  nobody  but  Abner  cared  to 
read  it. 

So  far  as  I  know,  no  word  ever  came  from 
Jeff.  His  name  was  never  mentioned  among 
us. 

It  was  now  past  the  middle  of  September. 
Except  for  the  fall  ploughing  on  fields  that 
were  to  be  put  to  grass  under  the  grain  in 
the  spring  —  which  would  come  much  later 
—  the  getting  in  of  the  root  crops,  and  the 
husking,  our  season's  labors  were  pretty  well 
behind  us.  The  women  folk  had  toiled  like 
slaves  as  well,  taking  almost  all  the  chores 
about  the  cattle-barns  off  our  shoulders, 
and  carrying  on  the  butter-making  without 
bothering  us.  Now  that  a  good  many  cows 
were  drying  up,  it  was  their  turn  to  take 
things  easy,  too.  But  the  girls,  instead  of 
being  glad  at  this,  began  to  borrow  unhappi- 
ness  over  the  certainty  that  there  would  be 
no  husking-bees  on  the  Beech  farm. 

One  heard  no  other  subject  discussed  now, 
as  we  sat  of  a  night  in  the  kitchen.  Even 
when  we  foregathered  in  the  living-room 
instead,  the  Babcock  and  the  Underwood 
girl  talked  in  ostentatiously  low  tones  of  the 
hardship   of   missing  such  opportunities  for 


50  THE    COPPERHEAD 

getting  beaux,  and  having  fun.  They  re- 
called to  each  other,  with  tones  of  longing, 
this  and  that  husking-bee  of  other  years  — 
now  one  held  of  a  moonlight  night  in  the 
field  itself,  where  the  young  men  pulled  the 
stacks  down  and  dragged  them  to  where 
the  girls  sat  in  a  ring  on  big  pumpkins, 
and  merriment,  songs,  and  chorused  laughter 
chased  the  happy  hours  along  ;  now  of  a  bee 
held  in  the  late  wintry  weather,  where  the 
men  went  off  to  the  barn  by  themselves  and 
husked  till  they  were  tired,  and  then  with 
warning  whoops  came  back  to  where  the 
girls  were  waiting  for  them  in  the  warm, 
hospitable  farm-house,  and  the  frolic  began, 
with  cider  and  apples  and  pumpkin-pies, 
and  old  Lem  Hornbeck's  fiddle  to  lead  the 
dancing. 

Alas  !  they  shook  their  empty  heads  and 
mourned,  there  would  be  no  more  of  these 
delightful  times  !  Nothing  definite  was  ever 
said  as  to  the  reason  for  our  ostracism  from 
the  sports  and  social  enjoyments  of  the  sea- 
son. There  was  no  need  for  that.  We  all 
knew  too  well  that  it  was  Abner  Beech's 
politics  which  made  us  outcasts,  but  even 
these  two  complaining  girls  did  not  venture 


ANTIETAM  51 

to  say  so  in  his  hearing.  Their  talk,  how- 
ever, grew  at  last  so  persistently  querulous 
that  "  M'rye  "  bluntly  told  them  one  night 
to  "shut  up  about  husking-bees,"  following 
them  out  into  the  kitchen  for  that  purpose, 
and  speaking  with  unaccustomed  acerbity. 
Thereafter  we  heard  no  more  of  their  grum- 
bling, but  in  a  week  or  two  "  Till  "  Babcock 
left  for  her  home  over  on  the  Dutch  Road, 
and  began  circulating  the  report  that  we 
prayed  every  night  for  the  success  of  Jeff 
Davis. 

It  was  on  a  day  in  the  latter  half  of 
September,  perhaps  the  20th  or  21st  —  as 
nearly  as  I  am  able  to  make  out  from  the 
records  now  —  that  Hurley  and  I  started  off 
with  a  double  team  and  our  big  box-wagon, 
just  after  breakfast,  on  a  long  day's  journey. 
We  were  taking  a  heavy  load  of  potatoes  in 
to  market  at  Octavius,  twelve  miles  distant ; 
thence  we  were  to  drive  out  an  additional 
three  miles  to  a  cooper-shop  and  bring  back 
as  many  butter-firkins  as  we  could  stack  up 
behind  us,  not  to  mention  a  lot  of  groceries 
of  which  "  M'rye  "  gave  me  a  list. 

It  was  a  warm,  sweet  aired,  hazy  autumn 
day,  with  a  dusky  red  sun  sauntering   idly 


52  THE    COPPERHEAD 

about  in  the  sky,  too  indolent  to  cast  more 
than  the  dimmest  and  most  casual  suggestion 
of  a  shadow  for  anything  or  anybody.  The 
Irishman  sat  round-backed  and  contented  on 
the  very  high  seat  overhanging  the  horses, 
his  elbows  on  his  knees,  and  a  little  black 
pipe  turned  upside  down  in  his  mouth.  He 
would  suck  satisfiedly  at  this  for  hours 
after  the  fire  had  gone  out,  until,  my  patience 
exhausted,  I  begged  him  to  light  it  again.  He 
seemed  almost  never  to  put  any  new  tobacco 
into  this  pipe,  and  to  this  day  it  remains  a 
twin-mystery  to  me  why  its  contents  neither 
burned  themselves  to  nothing  nor  fell  out. 

We  talked  a  good  deal,  in  a  desultory 
fashion,  as  the  team  plodded  their  slow  way 
into  Octavius.  Hurley  told  me,  in  answer 
to  the  questions  of  a  curious  boy,  many  inter- 
esting and  remarkable  things  about  the  old 
country,  as  he  always  called  it,  and  more 
particularly  about  his  native  part  of  it,  which 
was  on  the  sea-shore  within  sight  of  Skibbereen. 
He  professed  always  to  be  filled  with  longing 
to  go  back,  but  at  the  same  time  guarded 
his  tiny  personal  expenditure  with  the  great- 
est solicitude,  in  order  to  save  money  to  help 
one  of  his  relations  to  get  away.    Once,  when 


ANTIETAM  53 

I  taxed  him  with  this  inconsistency,  he  ex- 
plained that  life  in  Ireland  was  the  most 
delicious  thing  on  earth,  but  you  had  to  get 
off  at  a  distance  of  some  thousands  of  miles 
to  really  appreciate  it. 

Naturally  there  was  considerable  talk 
between  us,  as  well,  about  Abner  Beech 
and  his  troubles.  I  don't  know  where  I 
could  have  heard  it,  but  when  Hurley  first 
came  to  us  I  at  once  took  it  for  granted  that 
the  fact  of  his  nationality  made  him  a  sym- 
pathizer with  the  views  of  our  household. 
Perhaps  I  only  jumped  at  this  conclusion 
from  the  general  ground  that  the  few  Irish 
who  in  those  days  found  their  way  into  the 
farm-country  were  held  rather  at  arms-length 
by  the  community,  and  must  in  the  nature 
of  things  feel  drawn  to  other  outcasts.  At 
all  events,  I  made  no  mistake.  Hurley  could 
not  have  well  been  more  vehemently  em- 
bittered against  abolitionism  and  the  war 
than  Abner  was,  but  he  expressed  his  feel- 
ings with  much  greater  vivacity  and  fluency 
of  speech.  It  was  surprising  to  see  how 
much  he  knew  about  the  politics  and  political 
institutions  of  a  strange  country,  and  how 
excited  he  grew  about  them  when   anyone 


54  THE   COPPERHEAD 

would  listen  to  him.  But  as  he  was  a  small 
man,  getting  on  in  years,  he  did  not  dare  air 
these  views  down  at  the  Corners.  The 
result  was  that  he  and  Abner  were  driven 
to  commune  together,  and  mutually  inflamed 
each  other's  passionate  prejudices  —  which 
was  not  at  all  needful. 

When  at  last,  shortly  before  noon,  we 
drove  into  Octavius,  I  jumped  off  to  fill 
one  portion  of  the  grocery  errands,  leaving 
Hurley  to  drive  on  with  the  potatoes.  We 
were  to  meet  at  the  little  village  tavern  for 
dinner. 

He  was  feeding  the  horses  in  the  hotel 
shed  when  I  rejoined  him  an  hour  or  so 
later.  I  came  in,  bursting  with  the  impor- 
tance of  the  news  I  had  picked  up  — 
scattered,  incomplete,  and  even  incoherent 
news,  but  of  a  most  exciting  sort.  The 
awful  battle  of  Antietam  had  happened  two 
or  three  days  before,  and  nobody  in  all 
Octavius  was  talking  or  thinking  of  any- 
thing else.  Both  the  Dearborn  County  regi- 
ments had  been  in  the  thick  of  the  fight, 
and  I  could  see  from  afar,  as  I  stood  on  the 
outskirts  of  the  throng  in  front  of  the  post- 
office,  some   long  strips  of  paper  posted   up 


ANTIETAM  55 

beside  the  door,  which  men  said  contained 
a  list  of  our  local  dead  and  wounded.  It 
was  hopeless,  however,  to  attempt  to  get 
anywhere  near  this  list,  and  nobody  whom 
I  questioned,  knew  anything  about  the  names 
of  those  young  men  who  had  marched  away 
from  our  Four  Corners.  Someone  did  call 
out,  though,  that  the  telegraph  had  broken 
down,  or  gone  wrong,  and  that  not  half  the 
news  had  come  in  as  yet.  But  they  were  all 
so  deeply  stirred  up,  so  fiercely  pushing  and 
hauling  to  get  toward  the  door,  that  I  could 
learn  little  else. 

This  was  what  I  began  to  tell  Hurley, 
with  eager  volubility,  as  soon  as  I  got  in 
under  the  shed.  He  went  on  with  his  back 
to  me,  impassively  measuring  out  the  oats 
from  the  bag,  and  clearing  aside  the  stale 
hay  in  the  manger,  the  impatient  horses 
rubbing  at  his  shoulders  with  their  noses  the 
while.  Then,  as  I  was  nearly  done,  he  turned 
and  came  out  to  me,  slapping  the  fodder- 
mess  off  his  hands. 

He  had  a  big,  fresh  cut  running  trans- 
versely across  his  nose  and  cheek,  and  there 
were  stains  of  blood  in  the  gray  stubble  of 
beard  on  his  chin.     I  saw  too  that  his  clothes 


56  THE    COPPERHEAD 

looked  as  if  lie  bad  been  rolled  on  tbe  dusty 
road  outside. 

"  Sure,  tben,  I'm  after  bearin'  the  news 
myself,"  was  all  be  said. 

He  drew  out  from  beneath  the  wagon  seat 
a  bag  of  crackers  and  a  hunk  of  cheese,  and, 
seating  himself  on  an  overturned  barrel,  began 
to  eat.  By  a  gesture  I  was  invited  to  share 
this  meal,  and  did  so,  sitting  beside  him. 
Something  had  happened,  apparently,  to  pre- 
vent our  having  dinner  in  the  tavern. 

I  fairly  yearned  to  ask  him  what  this 
something  was,  and  what  was  the  matter 
with  his  face,  but  it  did  not  seem  quite  the 
right  thing  to  do,  and  presently  he  began 
mumbling,  as  much  to  himself  as  to  me,  a 
long  and  broken  discourse,  from  which  I 
j)icked  out  that  he  had  mingled  with  a  group 
of  lusty  young  farmers  in  the  market-place, 
asking  for  the  latest  intelligence,  and  that 
while  they  were  conversing  in  a  wholly 
amiable  manner,  one  of  them  had  suddenly 
knocked  him  down  and  kicked  him,  and  that 
thereafter  they  had  pursued  him  with  curses 
and  loud  threats  half-way  to  the  tavern. 
This  and  much  more  he  proclaimed  between 
mouthfuls,  speaking  with  great  rapidity  and 


ANTIETAM  57 

in  so  much  more  marked  a  brogue  than  usual, 
that  I  understood  only  a  fraction  of  what  he 
said. 

He  professed  entire  innocence  of  offence 
in  the  affair,  and  either  could  not  or  would 
not  tell  what  it  was  he  had  said  to  invite 
the  blow.  I  dare  say  he  did  in  truth  richly 
provoke  the  violence  he  encountered,  but  at 
the  time  I  regarded  him  as  a  martyr,  and 
swelled  with  indignation  every  time  I  looked 
at  his  nose. 

I  remained  angry,  indeed,  long  after  he 
himself  had  altogether  recovered  his  equanim- 
ity and  whimsical  good  spirits.  He  waited 
outside  on  the  seat  while  I  went  in  to  pay 
for  the  baiting  of  the  horses,  and  it  was  as 
well  that  he  did,  I  fancy,  because  there  were 
half  a  dozen  brawny  farm-hands  and  villagers 
standing  about  the  bar,  who  were  laughing 
in  a  stormy  way  over  the  episode  of  the 
"  Copperhead  Paddy  "  in  the  market. 

We  drove  away,  however,  without  incident 
of  any  sort  —  sagaciously  turning  off  the 
main  street  before  we  reached  the  post-office 
block,  where  the  congregated  crowd  seemed 
larger  than  ever.  There  seemed  to  be  some 
fresh  tidings,  for  several  scattering  outbursts 


58  THE    COPPERHEAD 

of  cheering  reached  our  ears  after  we  could 
no  longer  see  the  throng;  but,  so  far  from 
stopping  to  inquire  what  it  was,  Hurley  put 
whip  to  the  horses,  and  we  rattled  smartly 
along  out  of  the  excited  village  into  the 
tranquil,  scythe-shorn  country. 

The  cooper  to  whom  we  now  went  for  our 
butter-firkins  was  a  long-nosed,  lean,  and 
taciturn  man,  whom  I  think  of  always  as 
with  his  apron  tucked  up  at  the  corner,  and 
his  spectacles  on  his  forehead,  close  under 
the  edge  of  his  square  brown-paper  cap. 
He  had  had  word  that  we  were  coming,  and 
the  firkins  were  ready  for  us.  He  helped 
us  load  them  in  dead  silence,  and  with  a 
gloomy  air. 

Hurley  desired  the  sound  of  his  own  voice. 
"  Well,  then,  sir,"  he  said,  as  our  task  neared 
completion,  "  'tis  worth  coming  out  of  our 
way  these  fifteen  miles  to  lay  eyes  on  such 
fine,  grand  firkins  as  these  same  —  such  an 
elegant  shape  on  'em,  an'  put  together  wid 
such  nateness ! " 

"  You  could  git  'em  just  as  good  at 
Hagadorn's,"  said  the  cooper,  curtly,  "  within 
a  mile  of  your  place." 

"  Huh ! "    cried    Hurley,    with    contempt, 


ANTIETAM  59 

"  Haggydorn  is  it?  Faith,  we'll  not  touch 
him  or  his  firkins  ay  ether !  Why,  man, 
they're  not  fit  to  mention  the  same  day  wid 
yours.  Ah,  just  look  at  the  darlins,  will  ye, 
that  nate  an'  clane  a  Christian  could  ate  from 


em 


The  cooper  was  blarney-proof.  "Haga- 
dorn's  are  every  smitch  as  good ! "  he  re- 
peated, ungraciously. 

The  Irishman  looked  at  him  perplexedly, 
then  shook  his  head  as  if  the  problem  were 
too  much  for  him,  and  slowly  clambered  up 
to  the  seat.  He  had  gathered  up  the  lines, 
and  we  were  ready  to  start,  before  any 
suitable  words  came  to  his  tongue. 

"  Well,  then,  sir,"  he  said,  "  anything  to 
be  agreeable.  If  I  hear  a  man  speaking  a 
good  word  for  your  firkins,  I'll  dispute  him." 

"  The  firkins  are  well  enough,"  growled 
the  cooper  at  us,  "  an'  they're  made  to  sell, 
but  I  ain't  so  almighty  tickled  about  takin' 
Copperhead  money  for  'em  that  I  want  to 
clap  my  wings  an'  crow  over  it." 

He  turned  scornfully  on  his  heel  at  this, 
and  we  drove  away.  The  new  revelation 
of  our  friendlessness  depressed  me,  but 
Hurley   did    not   seem   to   mind    it    at    all. 


60  THE    COPPERHEAD 

After  a  philosophic  comparative  remark 
about  the  manners  of  pigs  run  wild  in  a  bog, 
he  dismissed  the  affair  from  his  thoughts 
altogether,  and  hummed  cheerful  words  to 
melancholy  tunes  half  the  way  home,  what 
time  he  was  not  talking  to  the  horses  or 
tossing  stray  conversational  fragments  at  me. 

My  own  mind  soon  enough  surrendered 
itself  to  harrowing  speculations  about  the 
battle  we  had  heard  of.  The  war  had  been 
going  on  now,  for  over  a  year,  but  most  of 
the  fighting  had  been  away  off  in  Missouri 
and  Tennessee,  or  on  the  lower  Mississippi, 
and  the  reports  had  not  possessed  for  me  any 
keen  direct  interest.  The  idea  of  men  from 
our  own  district  —  young  men  whom  I  had 
seen,  perhaps  fooled  with,  in  the  hayfield 
only  ten  weeks  before  —  being  in  an  actual 
storm  of  shot  and  shell,  produced  a  faintness 
at  the  pit  of  my  stomach.  Both  Dearborn 
County  regiments  were  in  it,  the  crowd  said. 
Then  of  course  our  men  must  have  been 
there  —  our  hired  men,  and  the  Phillips  boys, 
and  Byron  Truax,  and  his  cousin  Alonzo, 
and  our  Jeff !  And  if  so  many  others  had 
been  killed,  why  not  they  as  well  ? 

"Antietam"   still   has   a  power   to  arrest 


ANTIETAM  61 

my  eyes  on  the  printed  page,  and  disturb 
my  ears  in  the  hearing,  possessed  by  no  other 
battle  name.  It  seems  now  as  if  the  very 
word  itself  had  a  terrible  meaning  of  its  own 
to  me,  when  I  first  heard  it  that  September 
afternoon  —  as  if  I  recognized  it  to  be  the 
label  of  some  awful  novelty,  before  I  knew 
anything  else.  It  had  its  fascination  for 
Hurley,  too,  for  presently  I  heard  him  croon- 
ing to  himself,  to  one  of  his  queer  old  Irish 
tunes,  some  doggerel  lines  which  he  had 
made  up  to  rhyme  with  it  —  three  lines  with 
"cheat  'em,"  "beat  'em,"  and  "Antietam," 
and  then  his  pet  refrain,  "  Says  the  Shan  van 
Vocht." 

This  levity  jarred  unpleasantly  upon  the 
mood  into  which  I  had  worked  myself,  and 
I  turned  to  speak  of  it,  but  the  sight  of  his 
bruised  nose  and  cheek  restrained  me.  He 
had  suffered  too  much  for  the  faith  that  was 
in  him  to  be  lightly  questioned  now.  So  I 
returned  to  my  grisly  thoughts,  which  now 
all  at  once  resolved  themselves  into  a  convic- 
tion that  Jeff  had  been  killed  outright.  My 
fancy  darted  to  meet  this  notion,  and  straight- 
way pictured  for  me  a  fantastic  battle-field 
by    moonlight,    such    as    was     depicted    in 


62  THE    COPPERHEAD 

Lossing's  books,  with  overturned  cannon- 
wheels  and  dead  horses  in  the  foreground, 
and  in  the  centre,  conspicuous  above  all  else, 
the  inanimate  form  of  Jeff  Beech,  with  its 
face  coldly  radiant  in  the  moonshine. 

"I  guess  I'll  hop  off  and  walk  a  spell," 
I  said,  under  the  sudden  impulse  of  this 
distressing  visitation. 

It  was  only  when  I  was  on  the  ground, 
trudging  along  by  the  side  of  the  wagon, 
that  I  knew  why  I  had  got  down.  We  were 
within  a  few  rods  of  the  Corners,  where  one 
road  turned  off  to  go  to  the  post-office.  "  Per- 
haps it'd  be  a  good  idea  for  me  to  find  out  if 
they've  heard  anything  more  — I  mean  —  any- 
thing about  Jeff,"  I  suggested.  "  I'll  just 
look  in  and  see,  and  then  I  can  cut  home 
cross  lots." 

The  Irishman  nodded  and  drove  on. 

I  hung  behind,  at  the  Corners,  till  the 
wagon  had  begun  the  ascent  of  the  hill,  and 
the  looming  bulk  of  the  firkins  made  it  im- 
possible that  Hurley  could  see  which  way  I 
went.  Then,  without  hesitation,  I  turned 
instead  down  the  other  road  which  led  to 
"  Jee  "  Hagadorn's. 


CHAPTER   V 

"  JEE'S  "    TIDINGS 

Time  was  when  I  had  known  the  Hagadorn 
house,  from  the  outside  at  least,  as  well  as 
any  other  in  the  whole  township.  But  I  had 
avoided  that  road  so  long  now,  that  when  I 
came  up  to  the  place  it  seemed  quite  strange 
to  my  eyes. 

For  one  thing,  the  flower  garden  was 
much  bigger  than  it  had  formerly  been. 
To  state  it  differently,  Miss  Esther's  mari- 
golds and  columbines,  hollyhocks  and  peonies, 
had  been  allowed  to  usurp  a  lot  of  space  where 
sweet-corn,  potatoes  and  other  table-truck  used 
to  be  raised.  This  not  only  greatly  altered  the 
aspect  of  the  place,  but  it  lowered  my  idea  of 
the  practical  good-sense  of  its  owners. 

What  was  more  striking  still,  was  the  gen- 
eral air  of  decrepitude  and  decay  about  the 
house  itself.  An  eaves-trough  had  fallen 
down  ;  half  the  cellar  door  was  off  its  hinges, 
standing  up  against  the  wall ;  the  chimney 
was  ragged  and  broken  at  the  top ;  the  clap- 
63 


64  THE    COPPERHEAD 

boards  had  never  been  painted,  and  now 
were  almost  black  with  weather-stain  and 
dry  rot.  It  positively  appeared  to  me  as  if 
the  house  was  tipping  sideways,  over  against 
the  little  cooper-shop  adjoining  it  —  but  per- 
haps that  was  a  trick  of  the  waning  evening 
light.  I  said  to  myself  that  if  we  were  not 
prospering  on  the  Beech  farm,  at  least  our 
foe  "  Jee "  Hagadorn  did  not  seem  to  be 
doing  much  better  himself. 

In  truth,  Hagadorn  had  always  been  among 
the  poorest  members  of  our  community,  though 
this  by  no  means  involves  what  people  in  cities 
think  of  as  poverty.  He  had  a  little  place  of 
nearly  two  acres,  and  then  he  had  his  cooper- 
ing business  ;  with  the  two  he  ought  to  have 
got  on  comfortably  enough.  But  a  certain 
contrariness  in  his  nature  seemed  to  be  con- 
tinually interfering  with  this. 

This  strain  of  conscientious  perversity  ran 
through  all  we  knew  of  his  life  before  he  came 
to  us,  just  as  it  dominated  the  remainder  of 
his  career.  He  had  been  a  well-to-do  man 
some  ten  years  before,  in  a  city  in  the  west- 
ern part  of  the  State,  with  a  big  cooper-shop, 
and  a  lot  of  men  under  him,  making  the  bar- 
rels   for  a  large  brewery.     (It  was  in  these 


"JEE'S"    TIDINGS  65 

days,  I  fancy,  that  Esther  took  on  that  urban 
polish  which  the  younger  Benaiah  missed.) 
Then  he  got  the  notion  in  his  head  that  it 
was  wrong  to  make  barrels  for  beer,  and 
threw  the  whole  thing  up.  He  moved  into 
our  neighborhood  with  only  money  enough 
to  buy  the  old  Andrews  place,  and  build  a 
little  shop. 

It  was  a  good  opening  for  a  cooper,  and 
Hagadorn  might  have  flourished  if  he  had 
been  able  to  mind  his  own  business.  The 
very  first  thing  he  did  was  to  offend  a  num- 
ber of  our  biggest  butter-makers  by  taxing 
them  with  sinfulness  in  also  raising  hops, 
which  went  to  make  beer.  For  a  long  time 
they  would  buy  no  firkins  of  him.  Then, 
too,  he  made  an  unpleasant  impression  at 
church.  As  has  been  said,  our  meeting- 
house was  a  union  affair ;  that  is  to  say,  no 
one  denomination  being  numerous  enough  to 
have  an  edifice  of  its  own,  all  the  farmers 
roundabout  —  Methodists,  Baptists,  Presby- 
terians, and  so  on  —  joined  in  paying  the 
expenses.  The  travelling  preachers  who  came 
to  us  represented  these  great  sects,  with  lots 
of  minute  shadings  off  into  Hard-shell,  Soft- 
shell,  Freewill,  and   other   subdivided   mys- 


66  THE    COPPERHEAD 

teries  which  I  never  understood.  Hagadorn 
had  a  denomination  all  to  himself,  as  might 
have  been  expected  from  the  man.  What 
the  name  of  it  was  I  seem  never  to  have 
heard  ;  perhaps  it  had  no  name  at  all.  Peo- 
ple used  to  say,  though,  that  he  behaved  like 
a  Shouting  Methodist. 

This  was  another  way  of  saying  that  he 
made  a  nuisance  of  himself  in  church.  At 
prayer  meetings,  in  the  slack  seasons  of  the 
year,  he  would  pray  so  long,  and  with  such 
tremendous  shouting  and  fury  of  gestures, 
that  he  had  regularly  to  be  asked  to  stop,  so 
that  those  who  had  taken  the  trouble  to  learn 
and  practise  new  hymns  might  have  a  chance 
to  be  heard.  And  then  he  would  out-sing  all 
the  others,  not  knowing  the  tune  in  the  least, 
and  cause  added  confusion  by  yelling  out 
shrill  "  Aniens  !  "  between  the  bars.  At  one 
time  quite  a  number  of  the  leading  people 
ceased  attending  church  at  all,  on  account  of 
his  conduct. 

He  added  heavily  to  his  theological  unpop- 
ularity, too,  by  his  action  in  another  matter. 
There  was  a  wealthy  and  important  farmer 
living  over  on  the  west  side  of  Agrippa  Hill, 
who  was  a  Universalist.     The   expenses   of 


"JEE'S"    TIDINGS  67 

our  union  meeting-house  were  felt  to  be  a 
good  deal  of  a  burden,  and  our  elders,  con- 
ferring together,  decided  that  it  would  be  a 
good  thing  to  waive  ordinary  prejudices,  and 
let  the  Universalists  come  in,  and  have  their 
share  of  the  preaching.  It  would  be  more 
neighborly,  they  felt,  and  they  would  get  a 
subscription  from  the  Agrippa  Hill  farmer. 
He  assented  to  the  project,  and  came  over 
four  or  five  Sundays  with  his  family  and 
hired  help,  listened  unflinchingly  to  orthodox 
sermons  full  of  sulphur  and  blue  flames,  and 
put  money  on  the  plate  every  time.  Then  a 
Universalist  preacher  occupied  the  pulpit  one 
Sunday,  and  preached  a  highly  inoffensive 
and  non-committal  sermon,  and  "  Jee  "  Haga- 
dorn  stood  up  in  his  pew  and  violently  de- 
nounced him  as  an  infidel,  before  he  had 
descended  the  pulpit  steps.  This  created  a 
painful  scandal.  The  Universalist  farmer, 
of  course,  never  darkened  that  church  door 
again.  Some  of  our  young  men  went  so  far 
as  to  discuss  the  ducking  of  the  obnoxious 
cooper  in  the  duck-pond.  But  he  himself 
was  neither  frightened  nor  ashamed. 

At  the  beginning,  too,  I  suppose  that  his 
taking  up  Abolitionism  made  him  enemies. 


68  THE    COPPERHEAD 

Dearborn  County  gave  Franklin  Pierce  a 
big  majority  in  '52,  and  the  bulk  of  our 
farmers,  I  know,  were  in  that  majority.  But 
I  have  already  dwelt  upon  the  way  in  which 
all  this  changed  in  the  years  just  before  the 
war.  Naturally  enough,  Hagadorn's  posi- 
tion also  changed.  The  rejected  stone  be- 
came the  head  of  the  corner.  The  tiresome 
fanatic  of  the  'fifties  was  the  inspired  prophet 
of  the  'sixties.  People  still  shrank  from 
giving  him  undue  credit  for  their  conversion, 
but  they  felt  themselves  swept  along  under 
his  influence  none  the  less. 

But  just  as  his  unpopularity  kept  him  poor 
in  the  old  days,  it  seemed  that  now  the  re- 
versed condition  was  making  him  still  poorer. 
The  truth  was,  he  was  too  excited  to  pay  any 
attention  to  his  business.  He  went  off  to 
Octavius  three  or  four  days  a  week  to  hear 
the  news,  and  when  he  remained  at  home,  he 
spent  much  more  time  standing  out  in  the 
road  discussing  politics  and  the  conduct  of 
the  war  with  passers-by,  than  he  did  over  his 
staves  and  hoops.  No  wonder  his  place  was 
run  down. 

The  house  was  dark  and  silent,  but  there 
was  some  sort  of  a  light  in  the  cooper-shop 


"JEE'S"    TIDINGS  69 

beyond.  My  hope  had  been  to  see  Esther 
rather  than  her  wild  old  father,  but  there 
was  nothing  for  it  but  to  go  over  to  the  shop. 
I  pushed  the  loosely  fitting  door  back  on  its 
leathern  hinges,  and  stepped  over  the  thresh- 
old. The  resinous  scent  of  newly  cut  wood, 
and  the  rustle  of  the  shavings  under  my  feet, 
had  the  effect,  somehow,  of  filling  me  with 
timidity.  It  required  an  effort  to  not  turn 
and  go  out  again. 

The  darkened  and  crowded  interior  of  the 
tiny  work-place  smelt  as  well,  I  noted  now,  of 
smoke.  On  the  floor  before  me  was  crouched 
a  shapeless  figure  —  bending  in  front  of  the 
little  furnace,  made  of  a  section  of  stove-pipe, 
which  the  cooper  used,  to  dry  the  insides  of 
newly  fashioned  barrels.  A  fire  in  this,  half- 
blaze,  half-smudge  —  gave  forth  the  light  I 
had  seen  from  without,  and  the  smoke  which 
was  making  my  nostrils  tingle.  Then  I  had 
to  sneeze,  and  the  kneeling  figure  sprang  on 
the  instant  from  the  floor. 

It  was  Esther  who  stood  before  me,  cough- 
ing a  little  from  the  smoke,  and  peering  in- 
quiringly at  me.  "  Oh — is  that  you,  Jimmy? " 
she  asked,  after  a  moment  of  puzzled  inspec- 
tion in  the  dark. 


70  THE    COPPERHEAD 

She  went  on,  before  I  had  time  to  speak, 
in  a  nervous,  half-laughing  way :  "  I've  been 
trying  to  roast  an  ear  of  corn  here,  but  it's 
the  worst  kind  of  a  failure.  I've  watched 
'  Ni '  do  it  a  hundred  times,  but  with  me  it 
always  comes  out  half-scorched  and  half- 
smoked.  I  guess  the  corn  is  too  old  now, 
any  way.  At  all  events,  it's  tougher  than 
Pharaoh's  heart." 

She  held  out  to  me,  in  proof  of  her  words, 
a  blackened  and  unseemly  roasting-ear.  I 
took  it,  and  turned  it  slowly  over,  looking  at 
it  with  the  grave  scrutiny  of  an  expert. 
Several  torn  and  opened  sections  showed 
where  she  had  been  testing  it  with  her  teeth. 
In  obedience  to  her  "  See  if  you  don't  think 
it's  too  old,"  I  took  a  diffident  bite,  at  a 
respectful  distance  from  the  marks  of  her 
experiments.  It  was  the  worst  I  had  ever 
tasted. 

"  I  came  over  to  see  if  you'd  heard  any- 
thing —  any  news,"  I  said,  desiring  to  get 
away  from  the  corn  subject. 

"  You  mean  about  Tom  ? "  she  asked, 
moving  so  that  she  might  see  me  more 
plainly. 

I  had  stupidly  forgotten  about  that  trans- 


"JEE'S"    TIDINGS  71 

formation  of  names.  "  Our  Jeff,  I  mean," 
I  made  answer. 

"  His  name  is  Thomas  Jefferson.  We  call 
him  Tom,"  she  explained  ;  "  that  other  name 
is  too  horrid.  Did  —  did  his  people  tell  you 
to  come  and  ask  me  ?  " 

I  shook  my  head.  "  Oh  no !  "  I  replied 
with  emphasis,  implying  by  my  tone,  I  dare 
say,  that  they  would  have  had  themselves 
cut  up  into  sausage-meat  first. 

The  girl  walked  past  me  to  the  door,  and 
out  to  the  road-side,  looking  down  toward 
the  bridge  with  a  lingering,  anxious  gaze. 
Then  she  came  back,  slowly. 

"  No,  we  have  no  news  !  "  she  said,  with 
an  effort  at  calmness.  "  He  wasn't  an  officer, 
that's  why.  All  we  know  is  that  the  brigade 
his  regiment  is  in  lost  141  killed,  560 
wounded,  and  38  missing.  That's  all !  "  She 
stood  in  the  doorway,  her  hands  clasped 
tight,  pressed  against  her  bosom.  "  That's 
alir''  she  repeated,  with  a  choking  voice. 

Suddenly  she  started  forward,  almost  ran 
across  the  few  yards  of  floor,  and,  throwing 
herself  down  in  the  darkest  corner,  where 
only  dimly  one  could  see  an  old  buffalo-robe 
spread  over  a  heap  of  staves,  began  sobbing 
as  if  her  heart  must  break. 


72  THE    COPPERHEAD 

Her  dress  had  brushed  over  the  stove-pipe, 
and  scattered  some  of  the  embers  beyond  the 
sheet  of  tin  it  stood  on.  I  stamped  these 
out,  and  carried  the  other  remnants  of  the 
fire  out  doors.  Then  I  returned,  and  stood 
about  in  the  smoky  little  shop,  quite  help- 
lessly listening  to  the  moans  and  convulsive 
sobs  which  rose  from  the  obscure  corner.  A 
bit  of  a  candle  in  a  bottle  stood  on  the  shelf 
by  the  window.  I  lighted  this,  but  it  hardly 
seemed  to  improve  the  situation.  I  could 
see  her  now,  as  well  as  hear  her  —  huddled 
face  downward  upon  the  skin,  her  whole 
form  shaking  with  the  violence  of  her  grief. 
I  had  never  been  so  unhappy  before  in  my 
life. 

At  last  —  it  may  not  have  been  very  long, 
but  it  seemed  hours  —  there  rose  the  sound 
of  voices  outside  on  the  road.  A  wagon  had 
stopped,  and  some  words  were  being  ex- 
changed. One  of  the  voices  grew  louder  — 
came  nearer ;  the  other  died  off,  ceased 
altogether,  and  the  wagon  could  be  heard 
driving  away.  On  the  instant  the  door  was 
pushed  sharply  open,  and  "  Jee  "  Hagadorn 
stood  on  the  threshold,  surveying  the  interior 
of  his  cooper-shop  with  gleaming  eyes. 


"JEE'S"    TIDINGS  73 

He  looked  at  me ;  he  looked  at  his  daugh- 
ter lying  in  the  corner ;  he  looked  at  the 
charred  mess  on  the  floor  —  yet  seemed  to 
see  nothing  of  what  he  looked  at.  His  face 
glowed  with  a  strange  excitement  —  which 
in  another  man  I  should  have  set  down  to 
drink. 

"  Glory  be  to  God !  Praise  to  the  Most 
High  !  Mine  eyes  have  seen  the  glory  of  the 
coming  of  the  Lord !  "  he  called  out,  stretch- 
ing forth  his  hands  in  a  rapturous  sort  of 
gesture  I  remembered  from  class-meeting  days. 

Esther  had  leaped  to  her  feet  with  squirrel- 
like  swiftness  at  the  sound  of  his  voice,  and 
now  stood  before  him,  her  hands  nervously 
clutching  at  each  other,  her  reddened,  tear- 
stained  face  a-fire  with  eagerness. 

"  Has  word  come  ?  —  is  he  safe  ?  —  have 
you  heard?"  so  her  excited  questions 
tumbled  over  one  another,  as  she  grasped 
"  Jee's "  sleeve  and  shook  it  in  feverish 
impatience. 

"  The  day  has  come  !  The  year  of  Jubilee 
is  here !  "  he  cried,  brushing  her  hand  aside, 
and  staring  with  a  fixed,  ecstatic,  open- 
mouthed  smile  straight  ahead  of  him.  "  The 
words  of  the  Prophet  are  fulfilled  ! " 


74  THE    COPPERHEAD 

"But  Tom!—  Tom!"  pleaded  the  girl, 
piteously.  "  The  list  has  come  ?  You  know 
he  is  safe  ?  " 

"Tom!  Tom!"  old  "Jee"  repeated  after 
her,  but  with  an  emphasis  contemptuous,  not 
solicitous.  "  Perish  a  hundred  Toms  —  yea 
—  ten  thousand  !  for  one  such  day  as  this  ! 
'  For  the  Scarlet  Woman  of  Babylon  is  over- 
thrown, and  bound  with  chains  and  cast  into 
the  lake  of  fire.  Therefore,  in  one  day  shall 
her  plagues  come,  death,  and  mourning,  and 
famine  ;  and  she  shall  be  utterly  burned  with 
fire :  for  strong  is  the  Lord  God  which 
judged  her ! '  " 

He  declaimed  these  words  in  a  shrill,  high- 
pitched  voice,  his  face  upturned,  and  his 
eyes  half-closed.  Esther  plucked  despair- 
ingly at  his  sleeve  once  more. 

"  But  have  you  seen  ?  —  is  his  name  ?  — 
you  must  have  seen  !  "  she  moaned,  incoher- 
ently. 

"  Jee  "  descended  for  the  moment  from  his 
plane  of  exaltation.  "  I  didn't  see  !  "  he  said, 
almost  peevishly.  "  Lincoln  has  signed  a 
proclamation  freeing  all  the  slaves  !  What 
do  you  suppose  I  care  for  your  Toms  and 
Dicks  and    Harrys,  on  such  a  day   as    this? 


"JEE'S"    TIDINGS  75 

'  Woe !  woe !  the  great  city  Babylon,  the 
strong  city  !  For  in  one  hour  is  thy  judg- 
ment come ! '  " 

The  girl  tottered  back  to  her  corner,  and 
threw  herself  limply  down  upon  the  buffalo- 
robe  again,  hiding  her  face  in  her  hands. 

I  pushed  my  way  past  the  cooper,  and 
trudged  cross-lots  home  in  the  dark,  tired, 
disturbed,  and  very  hungry,  but  thinking 
most  of  all  that  if  I  had  been  worth  my  salt, 
I  would  have  hit  "  Jee  "  Hagadorn  with  the 
adze  that  stood  up  against  the  door-still. 


CHAPTER  VI 

NT'S   TALK  WITH   ABNER 

It  must  have  been  a  fortnight  before  we 
learned  that  Jeff  Beech  and  Byron  Truax 
had  been  reported  missing.  I  say  "  we,"  but 
I  do  not  know  when  Abner  Beech  came  to 
hear  about  it.  One  of  the  hired  girls  had 
seen  the  farmer  get  up  from  his  chair,  with 
the  newly  arrived  weekly  World  in  his  hand, 
walk  over  to  where  his  wife  sat,  and  direct 
her  attention  to  a  line  of  the  print  with  his 
finger.  Then,  still  in  silence,  he  had  gone 
over  to  the  bookc;se,  opened  the  drawer 
where  he  kept  his  account-books,  and  locked 
the  journal  up  therein. 

We  took  it  for  granted  that  thus  the 
elderly  couple  had  learned  the  news  about 
their  son.  They  said  so  little  nowadays, 
either  to  each  other  or  to  us,  that  we 
were  driven  to  speculate  upon  their  dumb- 
show,  and  find  meanings  for  ourselves  in 
their  glances  and  actions.  No  one  of  us 
could  imagine  himself  or  herself  ventur- 
76 


NTS   TALK   WITH  ABNER  77 

ing  to  mention    Jeff's   name   in   their   hear- 
ing. 

Down  at  the  Corners,  though,  and  all 
about  our  district,  people  talked  of  very 
little  else.  Antietam  had  given  a  bloody 
welcome  to  our  little  group  of  warriors. 
Ray  Watkins  and  Lon  Truax  had  been  killed 
outright,  and  Ed  Phillips  was  in  the  hospital, 
with  the  chances  thought  to  be  against  him. 
Warner  Pitts,  our  other  hired  man,  had  been 
wounded  in  the  arm,  but  not  seriously,  and 
thereafter  behaved  with  such  conspicuous 
valor  that  it  was  said  he  was  to  be  promoted 
from  being  a  sergeant  to  a  lieutenancy.  All 
these  things,  however,  paled  in  interest  after 
the  first  few  days  before  the  fascinating 
mystery  of  what  had  become  of  Jeff  and 
Byron.  The  loungers  about  the  grocery- 
store  evenings  took  sides  as  to  the  definition 
of  "missing."  Some  said  it  meant  being 
taken  prisoners ;  but  it  was  known  that  at 
Antietam  the  Rebels  made  next  to  no  cap- 
tives. Others  held  that  "  missing  "  soldiers 
were  those  who  had  been  shot,  and  who 
crawled  off  somewhere  in  the  woods  out  of 
sight  to  die.  A  lumberman  from  Juno  Mills, 
who  was  up  on  a  horse-trade,  went  so  far  as 


78  THE    COPPERHEAD 

to  broach  still  a  third  theory,  viz.,  that 
"  missing  "  soldiers  were  those  who  had  run 
away  under  fire,  and  were  ashamed  to  show 
their  faces  again.  But  this  malicious  sug- 
gestion could  not,  of  course,  be  seriously 
considered. 

Meanwhile,  what  little  remained  of  the 
fall  farm-work  went  on  as  if  nothing  had 
happened.  The  root-crops  were  dug,  the 
fodder  got  in,  and  the  late  apples  gathered. 
Abner  had  a  cider-mill  of  his  own,  but  we 
sold  a  much  larger  share  of  our  winter 
apples  than  usual.  Less  manure  was  drawn 
out  onto  the  fields  than  in  other  autumns, 
and  it  looked  as  if  there  was  to  be  little  or 
no  fall  ploughing.  Abner  went  about  his 
tasks  in  a  heavy,  spiritless  way  these  days, 
doggedly  enough,  but  with  none  of  his  old- 
time  vim.  He  no  longer  had  pleasure  even 
in  abusing  Lincoln  and  the  war  with  Hurley. 
Not  Antietam  itself  could  have  broken  his 
nerve,  but  at  least  it  silenced  his  tongue. 

Warner  Pitts  came  home  on  a  furlough, 
with  a  fine  new  uniform,  shoulder-straps  and 
sword,  and  his  arm  in  a  sling.  I  say  "home," 
but  the  only  roof  he  had  ever  slept  under  in 
these  parts,  was  ours,  and  now  he  stayed  as 


NI'8   TALK  WITH  ABNEB  79 

a  guest  at  Squire  Avery's  house,  and  never 
came  near  our  farm.  He  was  a  tall,  brown- 
faced,  sinewy  fellow,  with  curly  hair  and  a 
pushing  manner.  Although  he  had  been 
only  a  hired  man  he  now  cut  a  great  dash 
down  at  the  Corners,  with  his  shoulder-straps 
and  his  officer's  cape.  It  was  said  that  he 
had  declined  several  invitations  to  husking- 
bees,  and  that  when  he  left  the  service,  at 
the  end  of  his  time,  he  had  a  place  ready  for 
him  in  some  city  as  a  clerk  in  a  drygoods 
store  —  that  is,  of  course,  if  he  did  not  get  to 
be  colonel  or  general.  From  time  to  time  he 
was  seen  walking  out  through  the  dry,  rust- 
ling leaves  with  Squire  Avery's  oldest 
daughter. 

This  important  military  genius  did  not 
seem  able,  however,  to  throw  much  light 
upon  the  whereabouts  of  the  two  "  missing  " 
boys.  From  what  I  myself  heard  him  say 
about  the  battle,  and  from  what  others  re- 
ported of  his  talk,  it  seems  that  in  the  very 
early  morning  Hooker's  line  —  a  part  of  which 
consisted  of  Dearborn  County  men  —  moved 
forward  through  a  big  cornfield,  the  stalks  of 
which  were  much  higher  than  the  soldiers' 
heads.     When   they    came    out,    the    rebels 


80  THE    COPPERHEAD 

opened  such  a  hideous  fire  of  cannon  and 
musketry  upon  them  from  the  woods  close  by, 
that  those  who  did  not  fall  were  glad  to  run 
back  again  into  the  corn  for  shelter.  Thus 
all  became  confusion,  and  the  men  were  so 
mixed  up  that  there  was  no  getting  them  to- 
gether again.  Some  went  one  way,  some  an- 
other, through  the  tall  corn-rows,  and  Warner 
Pitts  could  not  remember  having  seen  either 
Jeff  or  Byron  at  all  after  the  march  began. 
Parts  of  the  regiment  formed  again  out  on 
the  road  toward  the  Dunker  church,  but  other 
parts  found  themselves  half  a  mile  away 
among  the  fragments  of  a  Michigan  regiment, 
and  a  good  many  more  were  left  lying  in  the 
fatal  cornfield.  Our  boys  had  not  been  traced 
among  the  dead,  but  that  did  not  prove  that 
they  were  alive.  And  so  we  were  no  wiser 
than  before. 

Warner  Pitts  only  nodded  in  a  distant  way 
to  me  when  he  saw  me  first,  with  a  cool 
"  Hello,  youngster  !  "  I  expected  that  he 
would  ask  after  the  folks  at  the  farm  which 
had  been  so  long  his  home,  but  he  turned  to 
talk  with  someone  else,  and  said  never  a 
word.  Once,  some  days  afterward,  he  called 
out  as  I  passed  him,  "  How's  the  old  Copper- 


Nl'S   TALK  WITH  ABNEB  81 

head? "  and  the  Avery! girl  who  was  with  him 
laughed  aloud,  but  I  went  on  without  answer- 
ing. He  was  already  down  in  my  black- 
books,  in  company  with  pretty  nearly  every 
other  human  being  roundabout. 

This  list  of  enemies  was  indeed  so  full  that 
there  were  times  when  I  felt  like  crying  over 
my  isolation.  It  may  be  guessed,  then,  how 
rejoiced  I  was  one  afternoon  to  see  Ni  Haga- 
dorn  squeeze  his  way  through  our  orchard- 
bars,  and  saunter  across  under  the  trees  to 
where  I  was  at  work  sorting  a  heap  of  apples 
into  barrels.  I  could  have  run  to  meet  him, 
so  grateful  was  the  sight  of  any  friendly,  boy- 
ish face.  The  thought  that  perhaps  after  all 
he  had  not  come  to  see  me  in  particular,  and 
that  possibly  he  brought  some  news  about 
Jeff,  only  flashed  across  my  mind  after  I  had 
smiled  a  broad  welcome  upon  him,  and  he 
stood  leaning  against  a  barrel  munching  the 
biggest  russet  he  had  been  able  to  pick  out. 

"  Abner  to  home  ?  "  he  asked,  after  a  pause 
of  neighborly  silence.  He  hadn't  come  to  see 
me  after  all. 

"  He's  around  the  barns  somewhere,"  I  re- 
plied ;  adding,  upon  reflection,  "  Have  you 
heard  something  fresh?" 


82  THE    COPPERHEAD 

Ni  shook  his  sorrel  head,  and  buried  his 
teeth  deep  into  the  apple.  "  No,  nothin',"  he 
said,  at  last,  with  his  mouth  full,  "  only 
thought  I'd  come  up  an'  talk  it  over  with 
Abner." 

The  calm  audacity  of  the  proposition  took 
my  breath  away.  "  He'll  boot  you  off 'm  the 
place  if  you  try  it,"  I  warned  him. 

But  Ni  did  not  scare  easily.  "  Oh,  no," 
he  said,  with  light  confidence,  "me  an' 
Abner's  all  right." 

As  if  to  put  this  assurance  to  the  test,  the 
figure  of  the  farmer  was  at  this  moment  visi- 
ble, coming  toward  us  down  the  orchard  road. 
He  was  in  his  shirt-sleeves,  with  the  limp, 
discolored  old  broad-brimmed  felt  hat  he  al- 
ways wore  pulled  down  over  his  eyes.  Though 
he  no  longer  held  his  head  so  proudly  erect 
as  I  could  remember  it,  there  were  still  sug- 
gestions of  great  force  and  mastership  in  his 
broad  shoulders  and  big  beard,  and  in  the 
solid,  long-gaited  manner  of  his  walk.  He 
carried  a  pitchfork  in  his  hand. 

"Hello,  Abner?"  said  Ni,  as  the  farmer 
came  up  and  halted,  surveying  each  of  us  in 
turn  with  an  impassive  scrutiny. 

"  How  Y  ye  !  "  returned  Abner,  with  cold 


NI'S   TALK   WITH  ABNER  83 

civility.  I  fancied  he  must  be  surprised  to 
see  the  son  of  his  enemy  here,  calmly  gnawing 
his  way  through  one  of  our  apples,  and  acting 
as  if  the  place  belonged  to  him.  But  he  gave 
no  signs  of  astonishment,  and  after  some 
words  of  direction  to  me  concerning  my 
work,  started  to  move  on  again  toward  the 
barns. 

Ni  was  not  disposed  to  be  thus  cheated  out 
of  his  conversation :  "  Seen  Warner  Pitts 
since  he's  got  back?"  he  called  out,  and  at 
this  the  farmer  stopped  and  turned  round. 
"  You'd  hardly  know  him  now,"  the  butcher's 
assistant  went  on,  with  cheerful  briskness. 
"  Why  you'd  think  he'd  never  hoofed  it  over 
ploughed  land  in  all  his  life.  He's  got  his 
boots  blacked  up  every  day,  an'  his  hair 
greased,  an'  a  whole  new  suit  of  broadcloth, 
with  shoulder-straps  an'  brass  buttons,  an'  a 
sword  —  he  brings  it  down  to  the  Corners 
every  evening,  so't  the  boys  at  the  store  can 
heft  it— an'  he's  —  " 

"  What  do  I  care  about  all  this  ?  "  broke  in 
Abner.  His  voice  was  heavy,  with  a  growling 
ground-note,  and  his  eyes  threw  out  an  angry 
light  under  the  shading  hat-brim.  "  He  can 
go  to  the  devil,  an'  take  his  sword  with  him, 
for  all  o'  me  !  " 


84  THE    COPPERHEAD 

Hostile  as  was  his  tone,  the  farmer  did  not 
again  turn  on  his  heel.  Instead,  he  seemed  to 
suspect  that  Ni  had  something  more  impor- 
tant to  say,  and  looked  him  steadfastly  in  the 
face. 

"  That's  what  I  say,  too,"  replied  Ni, 
lightly.  "  What's  beat  me  is  how  such  a 
fellow  as  that  got  to  be  an  officer  right  from 
the  word  '  go ! '  —  an'  him  the  poorest  shote 
in  the  whole  lot.  Now  if  it  had  a'  ben 
Spencer  Phillips  I  could  understand  it  —  or 
Bi  Truax,  or  —  or  your  Jeff —  " 

The  farmer  raised  his  fork  menacingly, 
with  a  wrathful  gesture.  "  Shet  up ! "  he 
shouted ;  "  shet  up,  I  say  !  or  I'll  make  ye  !  " 

To  my  great  amazement  Ni  was  not  at  all 
affected  by  this  demonstration.  He  leaned 
smilingly  against  the  barrel,  and  picked  out 
another  apple  —  a  spitzenberg  this  time. 

"  Now  look  a-here,  Abner,"  he  said,  argu- 
mentatively,  "  what's  the  good  o'  gittin'  mad? 
When  I've  had  my  say  out,  why,  if  you  don't 
like  it  you  needn't,  an'  nobody's  a  cent  the 
wuss  off.  Of  course,  if  you  come  down  to 
hard-pan,  it  ain't  none  o'  my  business  —  " 

"  No,"  interjected  Abner,  in  grim  assent, 
"  it  ain't  none  o'  your  business  !  " 


NFS   TALK   WITH  ABNEE  85 

"But  there  is  such  a  thing  as  being 
neighborly,"  Ni  went  on,  undismayed,  "an' 
meanin'  things  kindly,  an'  takin'  'em  as 
they're  meant." 

"Yes,  I  know  them  kindly  neighbors  o' 
mine  !  "  broke  in  the  farmer  with  acrid  irony, 
"  I've  summered  'em  an'  I've  wintered  'em, 
an'  the  Lord  deliver  me  from  the  whole 
caboodle  of  'em !  A  meaner  lot  o'  cusses 
never  cumbered  this  foot-stool !  " 

"It  takes  all  sorts  o'  people  to  make 
up  a  world,"  commented  this  freckled  and 
sandy-headed  young  philosopher,  testing  the 
crimson  skin  of  his  apple  with  a  tentative 
thumb-nail.  "Now  you  ain't  got  anything 
in  particular  agin  me,  have  you  ?  " 

"Nothin'  except  your  breed,"  the  farmer 
admitted.  The  frown  with  which  he  had 
been  regarding  Ni  had  softened  just  the  least 
bit  in  the  world. 

"  That  don't  count,"  said  Ni,  with  easy  con- 
fidence. "  Why,  what  does  breed  amount  to, 
anyway?  You  ought  to  be  the  last  man 
alive  to  lug  that  in  —  you,  who've  up  an' 
soured  on  your  own  breed  —  your  own  son 
Jeff  ! " 

I  looked  to  see  Abner  lift  his   fork  again, 


86  THE    COPPERHEAD 

and  perhaps  go  even  further  in  his  rage. 
Strangely  enough,  there  crept  into  his  sun- 
burnt, massive  face,  at  the  corners  of  the  eyes 
and  mouth,  something  like  the  beginnings  of 
a  puzzled  smile.  "  You're  a  cheeky  little 
cuss,  anyway !  "  was  his  final  comment.  Then 
his  expression  hardened  again.  "Who  put 
you  up  to  comin'  here,  an'  talkin'  like  this  to 
me?"  he  demanded,  sternly. 

"  Nobody  —  hope  to  die  !  "  protested  Ni. 
"  It's  all  my  own  spec.  It  riled  me  to  see 
you  mopin'  round  up  here  all  alone  by  your- 
self, not  knowin'  what'd  become  of  Jeff,  an' 
makin'  b'lieve  to  yourself  you  didn't  care,  an' 
so  givin'  yourself  away  to  the  whole  neigh- 
borhood." 

"  Damn  the  neighborhood !  "  said  Abner, 
fervently. 

"  Well,  they  talk  about  the  same  of  you," 
Ni  proceeded  with  an  air  of  impartial  candor. 
"  But  all  that  don't  do  you  no  good,  an'  don't 
do  Jeff  no  good !  " 

"  He  made  his  own  bed,  and  he  must 
lay  on  it,"  said  the  farmer,  with  dogged 
firmness. 

"  I  ain't  sayin'  he  mustn't,"  remonstrated 
the  other.     "  What  I'm  gittin'  at  is  that  you'd 


NI'S   TALK   WITH  ABNER  87 

feel  easier  in  your  mind  if  you  knew  where 
that  bed  was  —  an'  so'd  M'rye  !  " 

Abner  lifted  his  head.  "  His  mother  feels 
jest  as  I  do,"  he  said.  "  He  sneaked  off 
behind  our  backs  to  jine  Lincoln's  nigger- 
worshippers,  an'  levy  war  on  fellow-country- 
men o'  his'n  who'd  done  him  no  harm,  an' 
whatever  happens  to  him  it  serves  him  right. 
I  ain't  much  of  a  hand  to  lug  in  Scripter  to 
back  up  my  argyments  —  like  some  folks  you 
know  of  —  but  my  feelin'  is  :  '  Whoso  taketh 
up  the  sword  shall  perish  by  the  sword !  ' 
An'  so  says  his  mother  too  !  " 

"  Hm-m  !  "  grunted  Ni,  with  ostentatious 
incredulity.  He  bit  into  his  apple,  and  there 
ensued  a  momentary  silence.  Then,  as  soon 
as  he  was  able  to  speak,  this  astonishing  boy 
said :  "  Guess  I'll  have  a  talk  with  M'rye 
about  that  herself." 

The  farmer's  patience  was  running  emp- 
tings.  "  No  !  "  he  said,  severely,  "  I  forbid 
ye  !  Don't  ye  dare  say  a  word  to  her  about 
it.  She  don't  want  to  listen  to  ye  —  an'  I 
don't  know  what's  possessed  me  to  stand  round 
an'  gab  about  my  private  affairs  with  you  like 
this,  either.  I  don't  bear  ye  no  ill-will.  If 
fathers  can't  help  the  kind  o'  sons  they  bring 


88  THE   COPPERHEAD 

up,  why,  still  less  can  ye  blame  sons  on  ac- 
count o'  their  fathers.  But  it  ain't  a  thing  I 
want  to  talk  about  any  more,  either  now  or 
any  other  time.     That's  all." 

Abner  put  the  fork  over  his  shoulder,  as  a 
sign  that  he  was  going,  and  that  the  interview 
was  at  an  end.  But  the  persistent  Ni  had  a 
last  word  to  offer  —  and  he  left  his  barrel 
and  walked  over  to  the  farmer. 

"  See  here,"  he  said,  in  more  urgent  tones 
than  he  had  used  before,  "  I'm  goin'  South, 
an'  I'm  goin'  to  find  Jeff  if  it  takes  a  leg !  I 
don't  know  how  much  it'll  cost  —  I've  got  a 
little  of  my  own  saved  up  —  an'  I  thought 
p'r'aps  —  p'r'aps  you'd  like  to  —  " 

After  a  moment's  thought  the  farmer  shook 
his  head.  "No,"  he  said,  gravely,  almost 
reluctantly.  "  It's  agin  my  principles.  You 
know  me  —  Ni  —  you  know  I've  never  b'en  a 
near  man,  let  alone  a  mean  man.  An'  ye 
know,  too,  that  if  Je  —  if  that  boy  had  be- 
haved half-way  decent,  there  ain't  anything 
under  the  sun  I  wouldn't  'a'  done  for  him. 
But  this  thing —  I'm  obleeged  to  ye  for  offrin 
—  but —  No!  it's  agin  my  principles.  Still, 
I'm  obleeged  to  ye.  Fill  your  pockets  with 
them  spitzenbergs,  if  they  taste  good  to  ye." 


NI'S   TALK  WITH  ABNEB  89 

With  this  Abner  Beech  turned  and  walked 
resolutely  off. 

Left  alone  with  me,  Ni  threw  away  the 
half -eaten  apple  he  had  held  in  his  hand.  "I 
don't  want  any  of  his  dummed  old  spitzen- 
bergs,"  he  said,  pushing  his  foot  into  the  heap 
of  fruit  on  the  ground,  in  a  meditative  way. 

"Then  you  ain't  agoin'  South?"  I  que- 
ried. 

"  Yes  I  am ! "  he  replied,  with  decision. 
"  I  can  work  my  way  somehow.  Only  don't 
you  whisper  a  word  about  it  to  any  livin' 
soul,  d'ye  mind !  " 

Two  or  three  days  after  that  we  heard  that 
Ni  Hagadorn  had  left  for  unknown  parts. 
Some  said  he  had  gone  to  enlist  —  it  seems 
that,  despite  his  youth  and  small  stature  in 
my  eyes,  he  would  have  been  acceptable  to 
the  enlistment  standards  of  the  day  —  but 
the  major  opinion  was  that  much  dime-novel 
reading  had  inspired  him  with  the  notion  of 
becoming  a  trapper  in  the  mystic  Far  West. 

I  alone  possessed  the  secret  of  his  disappear- 
ance —  unless,  indeed,  his  sister  knew  —  and 
no  one  will  ever  know  what  struggles  I  had 
to  keep  from  confiding  it  to  Hurley. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE    ELECTION 

Soon  the  fine  weather  was  at  an  end.  One 
day  it  was  soft  and  warm,  with  a  tender  bine 
haze  over  the  distant  woods  and  a  sun  like 
a  blood-orange  in  the  tranquil  sky,  and  birds 
twittering  about  among  the  elders  and  sumac 
along  the  rail  fences.  And  the  next  day 
everything  was  gray  and  lifeless  and  desolate, 
with  fierce  winds  sweeping  over  the  bare 
fields,  and  driving  the  cold  rain  in  sheets 
before  them. 

Some  people  —  among  them  Hurley  —  said 
it  was  the  equinoctial  that  was  upon  us.  Ab- 
ner  Beech  ridiculed  this,  and  proved  by  the 
dictionary  that  the  equinoctial  meant  Sep- 
tember 22d,  whereas  it  was  now  well-nigh 
the  end  of  October.  The  Irishman  con- 
ceded that  in  books  this  might  be  so,  but 
stuck  wilfully  to  it  that  in  practice  the  equi- 
noctial came  just  before  winter  set  in.  After 
so  long  a  period  of  saddened  silence  brooding 

over  our  household,  it  was  quite  a  relief  to 
90 


THE   ELECTION  91 

hear   the    men    argue    this    question  of   the 
weather. 

Down  at  the  Corners  old  farmers  had 
wrangled  over  the  identity  of  the  equinoctial 
ever  since  I  could  remember.  It  was  pretty 
generally  agreed  that  each  year  along  some 
time  during  the  fall,  there  came  a  storm  which 
was  properly  entitled  to  that  name,  but  at  this 
point  harmony  ended.  Some  insisted  that  it 
came  before  Indian  Summer,  some  that  it  fol- 
lowed that  season,  and  this  was  further  com- 
plicated by  the  fact  that  no  one  was  ever 
quite  sure  when  it  was  Indian  Summer. 
There  were  all  sorts  of  rules  for  recognizing 
this  delectable  time  of  year,  rules  connected, 
I  recall,  with  the  opening  of  the  chestnut 
burrs,  the  movement  of  birds,  and  various 
other  incidents  in  nature's  great  processional, 
but  these  rules  rarely  came  right  in  our  rough 
latitude,  and  sometimes  never  came  at  all  — 
at  least  did  not  bring  with  them  anything  re- 
motely resembling  Indian  Summer,  but  made 
our  autumn  one  prolonged  and  miserable  suc- 
cession of  storms.  And  then  it  was  an  espe- 
cially trying  trick  to  pick  out  the  equinoctial 
from  the  lot  —  and  even  harder  still  to  prove 
to  sceptical  neighbors  that  you  were  right. 


92  THE    COPPERHEAD 

Whatever  this  particular  storm  may  have 
been  it  came  too  soon.  Being  so  short-handed 
on  the  farm,  we  were  much  behind  in  the 
matter  of  drawing  our  produce  to  market. 
And  now,  after  the  first  day  or  two  of  rain, 
the  roads  were  things  to  shudder  at.  It  was 
not  so  bad  getting  to  and  from  the  Corners, 
for  Agrippa  Hill  had  a  gravel  formation,  but 
beyond  the  Corners,  whichever  way  one  went 
over  the  bottom  lands  of  the  Nedahma  Valley, 
it  was  a  matter  of  lashing  the  panting  teams 
through  seas  of  mud  punctuated  by  abyssmal 
pitch-holes,  into  which  the  wheels  slumped 
over  their  hubs,  and  quite  generally  stuck  till 
they  were  pried  out  with  fence-rails. 

Abner  Beech  was  exceptionally  tender  in 
his  treatment  of  live-stock.  The  only  occa- 
sion I  ever  heard  of  on  which  he  was  tempted 
into  using  his  big  fists  upon  a  fellow-creature, 
was  once,  long  before  my  time,  when  one  of 
his  hired  men  struck  a  refractory  cow  over  its 
haunches  with  a  shovel.  He  knocked  this 
man  clear  through  the  stanchions.  Often  Jeff 
and  I  used  to  feel  that  he  carried  his  solici- 
tude for  horse-flesh  too  far  —  particularly 
when  we  wanted  to  drive  down  to  the  creek 
for  a  summer  evening  swim,  and  he  thought 
the  teams  were  too  tired. 


THE  ELECTION  93 

So  now  he  would  not  let  us  hitch  up  and 
drive  into  Octavius  with  even  the  lightest 
loads,  on  account  of  the  horses.  It  would  be 
better  to  wait,  he  said,  until  there  was  sled- 
ding ;  then  we  could  slip  in  in  no  time.  He 
pretended  that  all  the  signs  this  year  pointed 
to  an  early  winter. 

The  result  was  that  we  were  more  than 
ever  shut  off  from  news  of  the  outer  world. 
The  weekly  paper  which  came  to  us  was 
full,  I  remember,  of  political  arguments  and 
speeches  —  for  a  Congress  and  Governor  were 
to  be  elected  a  few  weeks  hence  —  but  there 
were  next  to  no  tidings  from  the  front.  The 
war,  in  fact,  seemed  to  have  almost  stopped 
altogether,  and  this  paper  spoke  of  it  as  a 
confessed  failure.  Farmer  Beech  and  Hur- 
ley, of  course,  took  the  same  view,  and  their 
remarks  quite  prepared  me  from  day  to  day 
to  hear  that  peace  had  been  concluded. 

But  down  at  the  Corners  a  strikingly  dif- 
ferent spirit  reigned.  It  quite  surprised  me, 
I  know,  when  I  went  down  on  occasion  for 
odds  and  ends  of  grocerieswhich  the  bad  roads 
prevented  us  from  getting  in  town,  to  dis- 
cover that  the  talk  there  was  all  in  favor  of 
having  a  great  deal  more  war  than  ever. 


94  THE    COPPERHEAD 

This  store  at  the  Corners  was  also  the  post- 
office,  and,  more  important  still,  it  served  as 
a  general  rallying  place  for  the  men-folks  of 
the  neighborhood  after  supper.  Lee  Wat- 
kins,  who  kept  it,  would  rather  have  missed 
a  meal  of  victuals  any  day  than  not  to  have 
had  the  "  boys  "  come  in  of  an  evening,  and 
sit  or  lounge  around  discussing  the  situation. 
Many  of  them  were  very  old  boys  now,  garru- 
lous seniors  who  remembered  "  Matty  "  Van 
Buren,  as  they  called  him,  and  told  weird 
stories  of  the  Anti-Masonry  days.  These  had 
the  well-worn  arm-chairs  nearest  the  stove,  in 
cold  weather,  and  spat  tobacco-juice  on  its 
hottest  parts  with  a  precision  born  of  long- 
time experience.  The  younger  fellows  ac- 
commodated themselves  about  the  outer  cir- 
cle, squatting  on  boxes,  or  with  one  leg  over 
a  barrel,  sampling  the  sugar  and  crackers  and 
raisins  in  an  absent-minded  way  each  even- 
ing, till  Mrs.  Watkins  came  out  and  put  the 
covers  on.  She  was  a  stout,  peevish  woman 
in  bloomers,  and  they  said  that  her  husband, 
Lee,  couldn't  have  run  the  post-office  for 
twenty-four  hours  if  it  hadn't  been  for  her. 
We  understood  that  she  was  a  Woman's 
Rights'  woman,  which  some  held  was  much  the 


THE   ELECTION  95 

same  as  believing  in  Free  Love.  All  that  was 
certain,  however,  was  that  she  did  not  believe 
in  free  lunches  out  of  her  husband's  barrels 
and  cases. 

The  chief  flaw  in  this  village  parliament 
was  the  absence  of  an  opposition.  Among 
all  the  accustomed  assemblage  of  men  who 
sat  about,  their  hats  well  back  on  their  heads, 
their  mouths  full  of  strong  language  and  to- 
bacco, there  was  none  to  disagree  upon  any 
essential  feature  of  the  situation  with  the 
others.  To  secure  even  the  merest  semblance 
of  variety,  those  whose  instincts  were  cross- 
grained  had  to  go  out  of  their  way  to  pick  up 
trifling  points  of  difference,  and  the  argu- 
ments over  these  had  to  be  spun  out  with  the 
greatest  possible  care,  to  be  kept  going  at  all. 
I  should  fancy,  however,  that  this  apparent 
concord  only  served  to  keep  before  their 
minds,  with  added  persistency,  the  fact  that 
there  was  an  opposition,  nursing  its  heretical 
wrath  in  solitude  up  on  the  Beech  farm.  At 
all  events,  I  seemed  never  to  go  into  the  gro- 
cery of  a  night  without  hearing  bitter  re- 
marks, or  even  curses,  levelled  at  our  house- 
hold. 

It  was  from  these  casual  visits  —  standing 


96  THE    COPPERHEAD 

about  on  the  outskirts  of  the  gathering,  be- 
yond the  feeble  ring  of  light  thrown  out  by 
the  kerosene  lamp  on  the  counter  —  that  I 
learned  how  deeply  the  Corners  were  opposed 
to  peace.  It  appeared  from  the  talk  here 
that  there  was  something  very  like  treason  at 
the  front.  The  victory  at  Antietam  —  so 
dearly  bought  with  the  blood  of  our  own  peo- 
ple —  had  been,  they  said,  of  worse  than  no 
use  at  all.  The  defeated  Rebels  had  been  al- 
lowed to  take  their  own  time  in  crossing  the 
Potomac  comfortably.  They  had  not  been 
pursued  or  molested  since,  and  the  Corners 
could  only  account  for  this  on  the  theory  of 
treachery  at  Union  headquarters.  Some  only 
hinted  guardedly  at  this.  Others  declared 
openly  that  the  North  was  being  sold  out  by 
its  own  generals.  As  for  old  "  Jee  "  Haga- 
dorn,  who  came  in  almost  every  night,  and 
monopolized  the  talking  all  the  while  he  was 
present,  he  made  no  bones  of  denouncing  Mc- 
Clellan  and  Porter  as  traitors  who  must  be 
hanged. 

He  comes  before  me  as  I  write  —  his  thin 
form  quivering  with  excitement,  the  red  stub- 
bly hair  standing  up  all  round  his  drawn  and 
livid  face,  his  knuckles  rapping  out  one  fierce 


THE   ELECTION  97 

point  after  another  on  the  candle-box,  as  he 
filled  the  hot  little  room  with  angry  declama- 
tion. "Go  it  Jee!"  "Give  'em  Hell!" 
"  Hangin's  too  good  for  'em ! "  his  auditors 
used  to  exclaim  in  encouragement,  whenever 
he  paused  for  breath,  and  then  he  would  start 
off  again  still  more  furiously,  till  he  had  to 
gasp  after  every  word,  and  screamed  "  Lin- 
coln-ah !  "  "  Lee-ah !  "  "  Antietam-ah  !  "  and 
so  on,  into  our  perturbed  ears.  Then  I  would 
go  home,  recalling  how  he  had  formerly 
shouted  about  "  Adam-ah !  "  and  "  Eve-ah  !  " 
in  church,  and  marvelling  that  he  had  never 
worked  himself  into  a  fit,  or  broken  a  blood- 
vessel. 

So  between  what  Abner  and  Hurley  said 
on  the  farm,  and  what  was  proclaimed  at  the 
Corners,  it  was  pretty  hard  to  figure  out 
whether  the  war  was  going  to  stop,  or  go  on 
much  worse  than  ever. 

Things  were  still  in  this  doubtful  state, 
when  election  Tuesday  came  round.  I  had 
not  known  or  thought  about  it,  until,  at  the 
breakfast-table  Abner  said  that  he  guessed 
he  and  Hurley  would  go  down  and  vote 
before  dinner.  He  had  some  days  before 
secured  a  package  of  ballots  from  the  organi- 


98  THE    COPPEBHEAD 

zation  of  his  party  at  Octavius,  and  these  he 
now  took  from  one  of  the  bookcase  drawers, 
and  divided  between  himself  and  Hurley. 

"  They  won't  be  much  use,  I  dessay, 
peddlin'  'em  at  the  polls,"  he  said,  with  a 
grim  momentary  smile,  "  but,  by  the  Eternal, 
we'll  vote  'em !  " 

"As  many  of  'em  as  they'll  be  allowin' 
us,"  added  Hurley,  in  chuckling  qualifica- 
tion. 

They  were  very  pretty  tickets  in  those 
days,  with  marbled  and  plaided  backs  in 
brilliant  colors,  and  spreading  eagles  in  front, 
over  the  printed  captions.  In  other  years  I 
had  shared  with  the  urchins  of  the  neighbor- 
hood the  excitement  of  scrambling  for  a 
share  of  these  ballots,  after  they  had  been 
counted,  and  tossed  out  of  the  boxes.  The 
conditions  did  not  seem  to  be  favorable  for  a 
repetition  of  that  this  year,  and  apparently 
this  occurred  to  Abner,  for  of  his  own  accord 
he  handed  me  over  some  dozen  of  the  little 
packets,  each  tied  with  a  thread,  and  labelled, 
"  State,"  "  Congressional,"  "  Judiciary,"  and 
the  like.  He,  moreover,  consented  —  the 
morning  chores  being  out  of  the  way  —  that 
I   should   accompany  them   to   the  Corners. 


THE   ELECTION  99 

The  ground  had  frozen  stiff  overnight,  and 
the  road  lay  in  hard  uncompromising  ridges 
between  the  tracks  of  yesterday's  wheels. 
The  two  men  swung  along  down  the  hill 
ahead  of  me,  with  resolute  strides  and  their 
heads  proudly  thrown  back,  as  if  they  had 
been  going  into  battle.  I  shuffled  on  behind 
in  my  new  boots,  also  much  excited.  The 
day  was  cold  and  raw. 

The  polls  were  fixed  up  in  a  little  building 
next  to  the  post-office  —  a  one-story  frame 
structure  where  Lee  Watkins  kept  his  bob- 
sleigh and  oil  barrels,  as  a  rule.  These  had 
been  cleared  out  into  the  yard,  and  a  table 
and  some  chairs  put  in  in  their  place.  A 
pane  of  glass  had  been  taken  out  of  the 
window.  Through  this  aperture  the  voters, 
each  in  his  turn,  passed  their  ballots,  to  be 
placed  by  the  inspectors  in  the  several  boxes 
ranged  along  the  window-sill  inside.  A 
dozen  or  more  men,  mainly  in  army  overcoats, 
stood  about  on  the  sidewalk  or  in  the  road 
outside,  stamping  their  feet  for  warmth,  and 
slapping  their  shoulders  with  their  hands, 
between  the  fingers  of  which  they  held  little 
packets  of  tickets  like  mine  —  that  is  to  say, 
they  were  like  mine  in  form  and  brilliancy  of 


100  TUE    COPPERHEAD 

color,  but  I  knew  well  enough  that  there  the 
resemblance  ended  abruptly.  A  yard  or  so 
from  the  window  two  posts  had  been  driven 
into  the  ground,  with  a  board  nailed  across 
to  prevent  undue  crowding. 

Abner  and  Hurley  marched  up  to  the  polls 
without  a  word  to  anyone,  or  any  sign  of 
recognition  from  the  bystanders.  Their 
appearance,  however,  visibly  awakened  the 
interest  of  the  Corners,  and  several  young 
fellows  who  were  standing  on  the  grocery 
steps  sauntered  over  in  their  wake  to  see 
what  was  going  on.  These,  with  the  ticket- 
peddlers,  crowded  up  close  to  the  window 
now,  behind  our  two  men. 

"  Abner  Beech !  "  called  the  farmer  through 
the  open  pane,  in  a  defiant  voice.  Standing 
on  tiptoe,  I  could  just  see  the  heads  of  some 
men  inside,  apparently  looking  through  the 
election  books.  No  questions  were  asked, 
and  in  a  minute  or  so  Abner  had  voted  and 
stood  aside  a  little,  to  make  room  for  his 
companion. 

"  Timothy  Joseph  Hurley  !  "  shouted  our 
hired  man,  standing  on  his  toes  to  make 
himself  taller,  and  squaring  his  weazened 
shoulders. 


THE   ELECTION  101 

"  Got  your  naturalization  papers  ?  "  came 
out  a  sharp,  gruff  inquiry  through  the  win- 
dow-sash. 

"  That  I  have  !  "  said  the  Irishman,  wagging 
his  head  in  satisfaction  at  having  foreseen 
this  trick,  and  winking  blandly  into  the  wall 
of  stolid,  hostile  faces  encircling  him.  "  That 
I  have  ! " 

He  drew  forth  an  old  and  crumpled  en- 
velope, from  his  breast-pocket,  and  extracted 
some  papers  from  its  ragged  folds  which  he 
passed  through  to  the  inspector.  The  latter 
just  cast  his  eye  over  the  documents  and  handed 
them  back. 

"  Them  ain't  no  good  !  "  he  said,  curtly. 

"  What's  that  you're  saying  ?  "  cried  the 
Irishman.  "  Sure  I've  voted  on  thim  same 
papers  every  year  since  1856,  an'  niver  a  man 
gainsaid  me.     No  good,  is  it?     Huh!" 

"  Why  ain't  they  no  good  ? "  boomed  in 
Abner  Beech's  deep,  angry  voice.  He  had 
moved  back  to  the  window. 

"  Because  they  ain't,  that's  enough  !  "  re- 
turned the  inspector.  "  Don't  block  up  the 
window,  there  !     Others  want  to  vote  !  " 

"  I'll  have  the  law  on  yez !  "  shouted  Hurley. 
"  I'll  swear  me  vote  in  !     I'll  —  I'll  —  " 


102  THE    COPPERHEAD 

"  Aw,  shut  up,  you  Mick  !  "  someone  called 
out  close  by,  and  then  there  rose  another  voice 
farther  back  in  the  group :  "  Don't  let  him 
vote  !  One  Copperhead's  enough  in  Agrippa ! " 

"  I'll  have  the  law  —  "  I  heard  Hurley  be- 
gin again,  at  the  top  of  his  voice,  and  Abner 
roared  out  something  I  could  not  catch. 
Then  as  in  a  flash  the  whole  cluster  of  men 
became  one  confused  whirling  tangle  of  arms 
and  legs,  sprawling  and  wrestling  on  the 
ground,  and  from  it  rising  the  repellant  sound 
of  blows  upon  flesh,  and  a  discordant  chorus 
of  grunts  and  curses.  Big  chunks  of  icy  mud 
flew  through  the  air,  kicked  up  by  the  boots 
of  the  men  as  they  struggled.  I  saw  the  two 
posts  with  the  board  weave  under  the  strain, 
then  give  way,  some  of  the  embattled  group 
tumbling  over  them  as  they  fell.  It  was 
wholly  impossible  to  guess  who  was  who  in 
this  writhing  and  tossing  mass  of  fighters. 
I  danced  up  and  down  in  a  frenzy  of  excite- 
ment, watching  this  wild  spectacle,  and,  so  I 
was  told  years  afterward,  screaming  with  all 
my  might  and  main. 

Then  all  at  once  there  was  a  mighty  up- 
heaval, and  a  big  man  half-scrambled,  half- 
hurled  himself  to  his   feet.     It   was   Abner, 


THE   ELECTION  103 

who  had  wrenched  one  of  the  posts  bodily 
from  under  the  others,  and  swung  it  now 
high  in  air.  Some  one  clutched  it,  and  for 
the  moment  stayed  its  descent,  yelling,  mean- 
while, "  Look  out !  Look  out !  "  as  though 
life  itself  depended  on  the  volume  of  his 
voice. 

The  ground  cleared  itself  as  if  by  magic. 
On  the  instant  there  was  only  Abner  standing 
there  with  the  post  in  his  hands,  and  little 
Hurley  beside  him,  the  lower  part  of  his  face 
covered  with  blood,  and  his  coat  torn  half 
from  his  back.  The  others  had  drawn  off, 
and  formed  a  semicircle  just  out  of  reach  of 
the  stake,  like  farm-dogs  round  a  wounded 
bear  at  bay.  Two  or  three  of  them  had  blood 
about  their  heads  and  necks. 

There  were  cries  of  "  Kill  him !  "  and  it 
was  said  afterward  that  Roselle  Upman  drew 
a  pistol,  but  if  he  did  others  dissuaded  him 
from  using  it.  Abner  stood  with  his  back  to 
the  building,  breathing  hard,  and  a  good  deal 
covered  with  mud,  but  eyeing  the  crowd  with 
a  masterful  ferocity,  and  from  time  to  time 
shifting  his  hands  to  get  a  new  grip  on  that 
tremendous  weapon  of  his.  He  said  not  a 
word. 


104  THE    COPPERHEAD 

The  Irishman,  after  a  moment's  hesitation, 
wiped  some  of  the  blood  from  his  mouth 
and  jaw,  and  turned  to  the  window  again. 
"  Timothy  Joseph  Hurley !  "  he  shouted  in, 
defiantly. 

This  time  another  inspector  came  to  the 
front  —  the  owner  of  the  tanyard  over  on  the 
Dutch  road,  and  a  man  of  importance  in 
the  district.  Evidently  there  had  been  a 
discussion  inside. 

"  We  will  take  your  vote  if  you  want  to 
swear  it  in,"  he  said,  in  a  pacific  tone,  and 
though  there  were  some  dissenting  cries 
from  the  crowd  without,  he  read  the  oath, 
and  Hurley  mumbled  it  after  him. 

Then,  with  some  difficulty,  he  sorted  out 
from  his  pocket  some  torn  and  mud-stained 
packets  of  tickets,  picked  the  cleanest  out 
from  each,  and  voted  them  —  all  with  a  fine 
air  of  unconcern. 

Abner  Beech  marched  out  behind  him  now 
with  a  resolute  clutch  on  the  stake.  The 
crowd  made  reluctant  way  for  them,  not 
without  a  good  many  truculent  remarks,  but 
with  no  offer  of  actual  violence.  Some  of 
the  more  boisterous  ones,  led  by  Roselle  Up- 
man,  were  for  following  them,  and  renewing 


THE  ELECTION  105 

the  encounter  beyond  the  Corners.  But  this, 
too,  came  to  nothing,  and  when  I  at  last 
ventured  to  cross  the  road  and  join  Abner 
and  Hurley,  even  the  cries  of  "  Copperhead  " 
had  died  away. 

The  sun  had  come  out,  and  the  frosty  ruts 
had  softened  to  stickiness.  The  men's  heavy 
boots  picked  up  whole  sections  of  plastic 
earth  as  they  walked  in  the  middle  of  the 
road  up  the  hill. 

"What's  the  matter  with  your  mouth?" 
asked  Abner  at  last,  casting  a  sidelong  glance 
at  his  companion.     "It's  be'n  a-bleedin'." 

Hurley  passed  an  investigating  hand  care- 
fully over  the  lower  part  of  his  face,  looked 
at  his  reddened  fingers,  and  laughed  aloud. 

"  I'd  a  fine  grand  bite  at  the  ear  of  one  of 
them,"  he  said,  in  explanation.  "'Tis  no 
blood  o'  mine." 

Abner  knitted  his  brows.  "  That  ain't  the 
way  Ave  fight  in  this  country,"  he  said,  in 
tones  of  displeasure.  "  Bitin'  men's  ears 
ain't  no  civilized  way  of  behavin'." 

"  Twas  not  much  of  a  day  for  civilization," 
remarked  Hurley,  lightly ;  and  there  was  no 
further  conversation  on  our  homeward  tramp. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   ELECTION   BONFIRE 

The  election  had  been  on  Tuesday,  Novem- 
ber 4th.  Our  paper,  containing  the  news  of 
the  result,  was  to  be  expected  at  the  Corners 
on  Friday  morning.  But  long  before  that 
date  we  had  learned  —  I  think  it  was  Hurley 
who  found  it  out  —  that  the  Abolitionists 
had  actually  been  beaten  in  our  Congressional 
district.  It  was  so  amazing  a  thing  that 
Abner  could  scarcely  credit  it,  but  it  was 
apparently  beyond  dispute.  For  that  matter, 
one  hardly  needed  further  evidence  than  the 
dejected  way  in  which  Philo  Andrews  and 
Myron  Pierce  and  other  followers  of  "  Jee  " 
Hagadorn  hung  their  heads  as  they  drove 
past  our  place. 

Of  course  it  had  all  been  done  by  the  vote 
in  the  big  town  of  Tecumseh,  way  at  the 
other  end  of  the  district,  and  by  those  towns 
surrounding  it  where  the  Mohawk  Dutch 
were  still  very  numerous.  But  this  did  not 
106 


THE  ELECTION  BONFIRE  107 

at  all  lessen  the  exhilaration  with  which  the 
discovery  that  the  Radicals  of  our  own  Dear- 
born County  had  been  snowed  under,  filled 
our  breasts.  Was  it  not  wonderful  to  think 
of,  that  these  heroes  of  remote  Adams  and 
Jay  Counties  should  have  been  at  work  re- 
deeming the  district  on  the  very  day  when 
the  two  votes  of  our  farm  marked  the  almost 
despairing  low-water  mark  of  the  cause  in 
Agrippa  ? 

Abner  could  hardly  keep  his  feet  down  on 
the  ground  or  floor  when  he  walked,  so  power- 
fully did  the  tidings  of  this  achievement 
thrill  his  veins.  He  said  the  springs  of  his 
knees  kept  jerking  upward,  so  that  he  wanted 
to  kick  and  dance  all  the  while.  Janey  Wil- 
cox, who,  though  a  meek  and  silent  girl,  was 
a  wildly  bitter  partisan,  was  all  eagerness  to 
light  a  bonfire  out  on  the  knoll  in  front  of 
the  house  Thursday  night,  so  that  every 
mother's  son  of  them  down  at  the  Corners 
might  see  it,  but  Abner  thought  it  would  be 
better  to  wait  until  we  had  the  printed  facts 
before  us. 

I  could  hardly  wait  to  finish  breakfast  Fri- 
day morning,  so  great  was  my  zeal  to  be  off 
to  the  post-office.     It  was  indeed  not  alto- 


108  THE    COPPERHEAD 

gether  daylight  when  I  started  at  quick  step 
down  the  hill.  Yet,  early  as  I  was,  there 
were  some  twenty  people  inside  Lee  Watkins's 
store  when  I  arrived,  all  standing  clustered 
about  the  high  square  row  of  glass-faced  pig- 
eon-holes reared  on  the  farther  end  of  the 
counter,  behind  which  could  be  seen  Lee  and 
his  sour-faced  wife  sorting  over  the  mail  by 
lamp-light.  "  Jee "  Hagadorn  was  in  this 
group  and  Squire  Avery,  and  most  of  the 
other  prominent  citizens  of  the  neighborhood. 
All  were  deeply  restless. 

Every  minute  or  two  some  one  of  them 
would  shout :  "  Come,  Lee,  give  us  out  one 
of  the  papers,  anyway ! "  But  for  some 
reason  Mrs.  Watkins  was  inexorable.  Her 
pursed-up  lips  and  resolute  expression  told 
us  plainly  that  none  would  be  served  till 
all  were  sorted.  So  the  impatient  waiters 
bided  their  time  under  protest,  exchanging 
splenetic  remarks  under  their  breath.  We 
must  have  stood  there  three-quarters  of  an 
hour. 

At  last  Mrs.  Watkins  wiped  her  hands  on 
the  apron  over  her  bloomers.  Everybody 
knew  the  signal,  and  on  the  instant  a  dozen 
arms  were  stretched  vehemently  toward  Lee, 


THE  ELECTION  BONFIRE  109 

struggling  for  precedence.  In  another  mo- 
ment wrappers  had  been  ripped  off  and  sheets 
flung  open.  Then  the  store  was  alive  with 
excited  voices.  "  Yes,  sir !  It's  true  !  The 
Copperheads  have  won  !  "  "  Tribune  con- 
cedes Seymour's  election  !  "  "  We're  beaten 
in  the  district  by  less'n  a  hundred !  "  "  Good- 
by,  human  liberty  !  "  "  Now  we  know  how 
Lazarus  felt  when  he  was  licked  by  the 
dogs ! "  and  so  on  —  a  stormy  warfare  of 
wrathful  ejaculations. 

In  my  turn  I  crowded  up,  and  held  out  my 
hand  for  the  paper  I  saw  in  the  box.  Lee 
Watkins  recognized  me,  and  took  the  paper 
out  to  deliver  to  me.  But  at  the  same  mo- 
ment his  wife,  who  had  been  hastily  scanning 
the  columns  of  some  other  journal,  looked  up 
and  also  saw  who  I  was.  With  a  lightning 
gesture  she  threw  out  her  hand,  snatched  our 
World  from  her  husband's  grasp,  and  threw 
it  spitefully  under  the  counter. 

"  There  ain't  nothing  for  you!  "  she  snapped 
at  me.  "  Pesky  Copperhead  rag  !  "  she  mut- 
tered to  herself. 

Although  I  had  plainly  seen  the  familiar 
wrapper,  and  understood  her  action  well 
enough,  it  never  occurred  to    me  to  argue 


110  THE    COPPERHEAD 

the  question  with  Mrs.  Watkins.  Her  bust- 
ling, determined  demeanor,  perhaps  also  her 
bloomers,  had  always  filled  me  with  awe.  I 
hung  about  for  a  time,  avoiding  her  range  of 
vision,  until  she  went  out  into  her  kitchen. 
Then  I  spoke  with  resolution  to  Lee: 

"  If  you  don't  give  me.  that  paper,"  I  said, 
"  I'll  tell  Abner,  an'  he'll  make  you  sweat  for 
it!" 

The  postmaster  stole  a  cautious  glance 
kitchenward.  Then  he  made  a  swift,  diving 
movement  under  the  counter,  and  furtively 
thrust  the  paper  out  at  me. 

"  Scoot !  "  he  said,  briefly,  and  I  obeyed 
him. 

Abner  was  simply  wild  with  bewildered 
delight  over  what  this  paper  had  to  tell  him. 
Even  my  narrative  about  Mrs.  Watkins, 
which  ordinarily  would  have  thrown  him 
into  transports  of  rage,  provoked  only  a  pass- 
ing sniff.  "  They've  only  got  two  more 
years  to  hold  that  post-office,"  was  his  only 
remark  upon  it. 

Hurley  and  Janey  Wilcox  and  even  the 
Underwood  girl  came  in,  and  listened  to 
Abner  reading  out  the  news.  He  shirked 
nothing,  but  waded  manfully  through  long 


THE  ELECTION  BON  FIB  E  111 

tables  of  figures  and  meaningless  catalogues 
of  counties  in  other  States,  the  names  of 
which  he  scarcely  knew  how  to  pronounce : 
"  '  Five-hundred  and  thirty-one  townships  in 
Wisconsin  give  Brown  21,409,  Smith  16,329, 
Ferguson  802,  a  Republican  loss  of  26.'  Do 
you  see  that,  Hurley?  It's  everywhere  the 
same."  "  '  Kalapoosas  County  elects  Repub- 
lican Sheriff  for  first  time  in  history  of  party.' 
That  isn't  so  good,  but  its  only  one  out  of 
ten  thousand."  " '  Four-hundred-and-six  town- 
ships in  New  Hampshire  show  a  net  Demo- 
cratic loss  of  — '  pshaw  !  there  ain't  nothing 
in  that !  Wait  till  the  other  towns  are  heard 
from !  " 

So  Abner  read  on  and  on,  slapping  his 
thigh  with  his  free  hand  whenever  anything 
specially  good  turned  up.  And  there  was  a 
great  deal  that  we  felt  to  be  good.  The 
State  had  been  carried.  Besides  our  Con- 
gressman, many  others  had  been  elected  in 
unlooked-for  places  —  so  much  so  that  the 
paper  held  out  the  hope  that  Congress  itself 
might  be  ours.  Of  course  Abner  at  once 
talked  as  if  it  were  already  ours.  Resting 
between  paragraphs,  he  told  Hurley  and  the 
others  that  this  settled  it.      The  war  must 


112  THE    COPPERHEAD 

now  surely  be  abandoned,  and  the  seceding 
States  invited  to  return  to  the  Union  on 
terms  honorable  to  both  sides. 

Hurley  had  assented  with  acquiescent  nods 
to  everything  else.  He  seemed  to  have  a 
reservation  on  this  last  point.  "  An'  what  if 
they  won't  come  ?  "  he  asked. 

"  Let  'em  stay  out,  then,"  replied  Abner, 
dogmatically.  "This  war  —  this  wicked 
war  between  brothers  —  must  stop.  That's 
the  meaning  of  Tuesday's  votes.  What  did 
you  and  I  go  down  to  the  Corners  and  cast 
our  ballots  for  ?  —  why,  for  peace  !  " 

"  Well,  somebody  else  got  my  share  of  it, 
then,"  remarked  Hurley,  with  a  rueful 
chuckle. 

Abner  was  too  intent  upon  his  theme  to 
notice.  "  Yes,  peace  !  "  he  repeated,  in  the 
deep  vibrating  tones  of  his  class-meeting 
manner.  "  Why,  just  think  what's  been 
a-goin'  on !  Great  armies  raised,  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  honest  men  taken  from  their 
work  an'  set  to  murderin'  each  other,  whole 
deestricks  of  country  torn  up  by  the  roots, 
homes  desolated,  the  land  filled  with  widows 
an'    orphans,    an'    every   house    a   house    of 


THE  ELECTION  BONFIBE  113 

Mrs.  Beech  had  been  sitting,  with  her 
mending-basket  on  her  knee,  listening  to  her 
husband  like  the  rest  of  us.  She  shot  to  her 
feet  now  as  these  last  words  of  his  quivered 
in  the  air,  paying  no  heed  to  the  basket  or  its 
scattered  contents  on  the  floor,  but  putting 
her  apron  to  her  eyes,  and  making  her  way 
thus  past  us,  half-blindly,  into  her  bedroom. 
I  thought  I  heard  the  sound  of  a  sob  as  she 
closed  the  door. 

That  the  stately,  proud,  self-contained 
mistress  of  our  household  should  act  like  this 
before  us  all  was  even  more  surprising  than 
Seymour's  election.  We  stared  at  one  an- 
other in  silent  astonishment. 

"  M'rye  ain't  feelin'  over  'n'  above  well," 
Abner  said  at  last,  apologetically.  "You 
girls  ought  to  spare  her  all  you  kin." 

One  could  see,  however,  that  he  was  as 
puzzled  as  the  rest  of  us.  He  rose  to  his  feet, 
walked  over  to  the  stove,  rubbed  his  boot 
meditatively  against  the  hearth  for  a  minute 
or  two,  then  came  back  again  to  the  table. 
It  was  with  a  visible  effort  that  he  finally 
shook  off  this  mood,  and  forced  a  smile  to  his 
lips. 

"  Well,  Janey,"  he  said,  with  an  effort  at 


114  THE    COPPERHEAD 

briskness,  "ye  kin  go  ahead  with  your  bon- 
fire, now.  I  guess  I've  got  some  old  bar'ls 
for  ye  over  'n'  the  cow-barn." 

But  having  said  this,  he  turned  abruptly 
and  followed  his  wife  into  the  little  chamber 
off  the  living-room. 


CHAPTER  IX 


ESTHER  S    VISIT 


The  next  day,  Saturday,  was  my  birthday. 
I  celebrated  it  by  a  heavy  cold,  with  a  burst- 
ing headache  and  chills  chasing  each  other 
down  my  back.  I  went  out  to  the  cow-barn 
with  the  two  men  before  daylight,  as  usual, 
but  felt  so  bad  that  I  had  to  come  back  to 
the  house  before  milking  was  half  over. 
The  moment  M'rye  saw  me,  I  was  ordered 
on  to  the  sick-list. 

The  Beech  homestead  was  a  good  place  to 
be  sick  in.  Both  M'rye  and  Janey  had  a 
talent  in  the  way  of  fixing  up  tasty  little 
dishes  for  invalids,  and  otherwise  ministering 
to  their  comfort,  which  year  after  year  went 
a-begging,  simply  because  all  the  men-folk 
kept  so  well.  Therefore,  when  the  rare 
opportunity  did  arrive,  they  made  the  most 
of  it.  I  had  my  feet  and  legs  put  into  a 
bucket  of  hot  water,  and  wrapped  round  with 
burdock  leaves.  Janey  prepared  for  my 
115 


116  THE    COPPERHEAD 

breakfast  some  soft  toast  —  not  the  insipid 
and  common  milk-toast  —  but  each  golden- 
brown  slice  treated  separately  on  a  plate, 
first  moistened  with  scalding  water,  then 
peppered,  salted,  and  buttered,  with  a  little 
cold  milk  on  top  of  all.  I  ate  this  sumptuous 
breakfast  at  my  leisure,  ensconced  in  M'rye's 
big  cushioned  rocking-chair,  with  my  feet 
and  legs,  well  tucked  up  in  a  blanket-shawl, 
stretched  out  on  another  chair,  comfortably 
near  the  stove. 

It  was  taken  for  granted  that  I  had  caught 
my  cold  out  around  the  bonfire  the  previous 
evening  —  and  this  conviction  threw  a  sort  of 
patriotic  glamour  about  my  illness,  at  least 
in  my  own  mind. 

The  bonfire  had  been  a  famous  success. 
Though  there  was  a  trifle  of  rain  in  the  air, 
the  barrels  and  mossy  discarded  old  fence- 
rails  burned  like  pitch-pine,  and  when  Hur- 
ley and  I  threw  on  armfuls  of  brush,  the 
sparks  burst  up  with  a  roar  into  a  flaming 
column  which  we  felt  must  be  visible  all  over 
our  side  of  Dearborn  County.  At  all  events, 
there  was  no  doubt  about  its  being  seen  and 
understood  down  at  the  Corners,  for  pres- 
ently our  enemies  there  started  an  answering 


ESTHER'S   VISIT  117 

bonfire,  which  glowed  from  time  to  time  with 
such  a  peculiarly  concentrated  radiance  that 
Aimer  said  Lee  Watkins  must  have  given 
them  some  of  his  kerosene-oil  barrels.  The 
thought  of  such  a  sacrifice  as  this  on  the  part 
of  the  postmaster  rather  disturbed  Abner's 
mind,  raising,  as  it  did,  the  hideous  sugges- 
tion that  possibly  later  returns  might  have 
altered  the  election  results.  But  when 
Hurley  and  I  dragged  forward  and  tipped 
over  into  the  blaze  the  whole  side  of  an  old 
abandoned  corn-crib,  and  heaped  dry  brush 
on  top  of  that,  till  the  very  sky  seemed  afire 
above  us,  and  the  stubble-fields  down  the 
hill-side  were  all  ruddy  in  the  light,  Abner 
confessed  himself  reassured.  Our  enthu- 
siasm was  so  great  that  it  was  nearly  ten 
o'clock  before  we  went  to  bed,  having  first 
put  the  fire  pretty  well  out,  lest  a  rising 
wind  during  the  night  should  scatter  sparks 
and  work  mischief. 

I  had  all  these  splendid  things  to  think  of 
next  day,  along  with  my  headache  and  the 
shivering  spine,  and  they  tipped  the  balance 
toward  satisfaction.  Shortly  after  breakfast 
M'rye  made  a  flaxseed  poultice  and  muffled 
it  flabbily  about  my  neck,  and  brought   me 


118  THE    COPPERHEAD 

also  some  boueset-tea  to  drink.  There  was  a 
debate  in  the  air  as  between  castor-oil  and 
senna,  fragments  of  which  were  borne  in  to 
me  when  the  kitchen  door  was  open.  The 
Underwood  girl  alarmed  me  by  steadily  in- 
sisting that  her  sister-in-law  always  broke  up 
sick-headaches  with  a  mustard-plaster  put  raw 
on  the  back  of  the  neck.  Every  once  in  a 
while  one  of  them  would  come  in  and  ad- 
dress to  me  the  stereotyped  formula  :  "  Feel 
\ny  better  ?  "  and  I  as  invariably  answered, 
'  No."  In  reality,  though,  I  was  lazily  com- 
fortable all  the  time,  with  Lossing's  "  Field- 
Book  of  the  War  of  1812  "  lying  open  on  my 
lap,  to  look  at  when  I  felt  inclined.  This 
book  was  not  nearly  so  interesting  as  the  one 
about  the  Revolution,  but  a  grandfather  of 
mine  had  marched  as  a  soldier  up  to  Sack- 
ett's  Harbor  in  the  later  war,  though  he  did 
not  seem  to  have  had  any  fighting  to  do  after 
he  got  there,  and  in  my  serious  moods  I 
always  felt  it  my  duty  to  read  about  his  war 
instead  of  the  other. 

So  the  day  passed  along,  and  dusk  began 
to  gather  in  the  living-room.  The  men  were 
off  outdoors  somewhere,  and  the  girls  were 
churning    in    the    butter-room.     M'rye   had 


ESTHER'S    VISIT  119 

come  in  with  her  mending,,  and  sat  on  the 
opposite  side  of  the  stove,  at  intervals  cast- 
ing glances  over  its  flat  top  to  satisfy  her- 
self that  my  poultice  had  not  sagged  down 
from  its  proper  place,  and  that  I  was  in 
other  respects  doing  as  well  as  could  be  ex- 
pected. 

Conversation  between  us  was  hardly  to  be 
thought  of,  even  if  I  had  not  been  so  drowsily 
indolent.  M'rye  was  not  a  talker,  and  pre- 
ferred always  to  sit  in  silence,  listening  to 
others,  or,  better  still,  going  on  at  her  work 
with  no  sounds  at  all  to  disturb  her  thoughts. 
These  long  periods  of  meditation,  and  the 
sedate  gaze  of  her  black,  penetrating  eyes, 
gave  me  the  feeling  that  she  must  be  much 
wiser  than  other  women,  who  could  not  keep 
still  at  all,  but  gabbled  everything  the  mo- 
ment it  came  into  their  heads. 

We  had  sat  thus  for  a  long,  long  time, 
until  I  began  to  wonder  how  she  could  sew 
in  the  waning  light,  when  all  at  once,  with- 
out lifting  her  eyes  from  her  work,  she  spoke 
to  me. 

"  D'  you  know  where  Ni  Hagadorn's  gone 
to?"  she  asked  me,  in  a  measured,  impres- 
sive voice. 


120  THE    COPPERHEAD 

"  He  —  he  —  told  me  he  was  a-goin'  away," 
I  made  answer,  with  weak  evasiveness. 

"But  where?  Down  South?"  She  looked 
up,  as  I  hesitated,  and  flashed  that  darkling 
glance  of  hers  at  me.  "  Out  with  it !  "  she 
commanded.     "  Tell  me  the  truth !  " 

Thus  adjured,  I  promptly  admitted  that  Ni 
had  said  he  was  going  South,  and  could  work 
his  way  somehow.  "  He's  gone,  you  know," 
I  added,  after  a  pause,  "  to  try  and  find  — 
that  is,  to  hunt  around  after — " 

"  Yes,  I  know,"  said  M'rye,  sententiously, 
and  another  long  silence  ensued. 

She  rose  after  a  time,  and  went  out  into 
the  kitchen,  returning  with  the  lighted  lamp. 
She  set  this  on  the  table,  putting  the  shade 
down  on  one  side  so  that  the  light  should 
not  hurt  my  eyes,  and  resumed  her  mending. 
The  yellow  glow  thus  falling  upon  her  gave 
to  her  dark,  severe,  high-featured  face  a 
duskier  effect  than  ever.  It  occurred  to  me 
that  Molly  Brant,  that  mysteriously  fascinat- 
ing and  bloody  Mohawk  queen  who  left  such 
an  awful  reddened  mark  upon  the  history  of 
her  native  Valley,  must  have  been  like  our 
M'rye.  My  mind  began  sleepily  to  clothe 
the  farmer's  wife  in  blankets  and  chains  of 


ESTHER'S    VISIT  121 

wampum,  with  eagles'  feathers  in  her  raven 
hair,  and  then  to  drift  vaguely  off  over  the 
threshold  of  Indian  dreamland,  when  sud- 
denly, with  a  start,  I  became  conscious  that 
some  unexpected  person  had  entered  the 
room  by  the  veranda-door  behind  me. 

The  rush  of  cold  air  from  without  had 
awakened  me  and  told  me  of  the  entrance. 
A  glance  at  M'rye's  face  revealed  the  rest. 
She  was  staring  at  the  newcomer  with  a 
dumfounded  expression  of  countenance,  her 
mouth  half-open  with  sheer  surprise.  Still 
staring,  she  rose  and  tilted  the  lamp-shade  in 
yet  another  direction,  so  that  the  light  was 
thrown  upon  the  stranger.  At  this  I  turned 
in  my  chair  to  look. 

It  was  Esther  Hagadorn  who  had  come  in ! 

There  was  a  moment's  awkward  silence, 
and  then  the  school-teacher  began  hurriedly 
to  speak.  "  I  saw  you  were  alone  from  the 
veranda  —  I  was  so  nervous,  it  never  occurred 
to  me  to  rap  —  the  curtains  being  up  — I — I 
walked  straight  in." 

As  if  in  comment  upon  this  statement, 
M'rye  marched  across  the  room,  and  pulled 
down  both  curtains  over  the  veranda  win- 
dows.    With   her  hand  still  upon  the  cord 


122  THE    COPPERHEAD 

of  the  second  shade,  she  turned  and  again 
dumbly  surveyed  her  visitor. 

Esther  flushed  visibly  at  this  reception, 
and  had  to  choke  down  the  first  words  that 
came  to  her  lips.  Then  she  went  on  better : 
"  I  hope  you'll  excuse  my  rudeness.  I  really 
did  forget  to  rap.  I  came  upon  very  special 
business.     Is  Ab  —  Mr.  Beech  at  home  ?  " 

"Won't  you  sit  down?"  said  M'rye,  with 
a  glum  effort  at  civility.  "  I  expect  him  in 
presently." 

The  school-ma'am,  displaying  some  diffi- 
dence, seated  herself  in  the  nearest  chair, 
and  gazed  at  the  wall-paper  with  intentness. 
She  had  never  seemed  to  notice  me  at  all  — 
indeed  had  spoken  of  seeing  M'rye  alone 
through  the  window  —  and  I  now  coughed, 
and  stirred  to  readjust  my  poultice,  but  she 
did  not  look  my  way.  M'rye  had  gone  back 
to  her  chair  by  the  stove,  and  taken  up  her 
mending  again. 

"  You'd  better  lay  off  your  things.  You 
won't  feel  'em  when  you  go  out,"  she  re- 
marked, after  an  embarrassing  period  of 
silence,  investing  the  formal  phrases  with 
chilling  intention. 

Esther  made  a  fumbling  motion  at  the  loop 


ESTHER'S   VISIT  123 

of  her  big  mink  cape,  but  did  not  unfasten  it. 

"I  —  I  don't  know  what  you  think  of  me," 
she  began,  at  last,  and  then  nervously  halted. 

"  Mebbe  it's  just  as  well  you  don't,"  said 
M'rye,  significantly,  darning  away  with  long 
sweeps  of  her  arm,  and  bending  attentively 
over  her  stocking  and  ball. 

"  I  can  understand  your  feeling  hard," 
Esther  went  on,  still  eying  the  sprawling 
blue  figures  on  the  wall,  and  plucking  with 
her  fingers  at  the  furry  tails  on  her  cape. 
"And  —  I  am  to  blame,  some,  I  can  see  now 
—  but  it  didn't  seem  so,  then,  to  either  of  us." 

"  It  ain't  no  affair  of  mine,"  remarked 
M'rye,  when  the  pause  came,  "  but  if  that's 
your  business  with  Abner,  you  won't  make 
much  by  waitin'.  Of  course  it's  nothing  to 
me,  one  way  or  t'other." 

Not  another  word  was  exchanged  for  a 
long  time.  From  where  I  sat  I  could  see 
the  girl's  lips  tremble,  as  she  looked  stead- 
fastly into  the  wall.  I  felt  certain  that  M'rye 
was  darning  the  same  place  over  and  over 
again,  so  furiously  did  she  keep  her  needle 
flying. 

All  at  once  she  looked  up  angrily.  "  Well," 
she  said,  in  loud,  bitter  tones :    "  Why  not 


124  THE   COPPERHEAD 

out  with  what  you've  come  to  say,  V  be  done 
with  it  ?     You've  heard  something,  I  know  !  " 

Esther  shook  her  head.  "  No,  Mrs.  Beech," 
she  said,  with  a  piteous  quaver  in  her  voice, 
"I  —  I  haven't  heard  anything !  " 

The  sound  of  her  own  broken  utterances 
seemed  to  affect  her  deeply.  Her  eyes  filled 
with  tears,  and  she  hastily  got  out  a  handker- 
chief from  her  muff,  and  began  drying  them. 
She  could  not  keep  from  sobbing  aloud  a 
little. 

M'rye  deliberately  took  another  stocking 
from  the  heap  in  the  basket,  fitted  it  over 
the  ball,  and  began  a  fresh  task  —  all  without 
a  glance  at  the  weeping  girl. 

Thus  the  two  women  still  sat,  when  Janey 
came  in  to  lay  the  table  for  supper.  She 
lifted  the  lamp  off  to  spread  the  cloth,  and 
put  it  on  again;  she  brought  in  plates  and 
knives  and  spoons,  and  arranged  them  in 
their  accustomed  places — all  the  while  fur- 
tively regarding  Miss  Hagadorn  with  an 
incredulous  surprise.  When  she  had  quite 
finished  she  went  over  to  her  mistress  and, 
bending  low,  whispered  so  that  we  could  all 
hear  quite  distinctly :  "  Is  she  goin'  to  stay 
to  supper  ?  " 


ESTHER'S   VISIT  125 

M'rye  hesitated,  but  Esther  lifted  her  head 
and  put  down  the  handkerchief  instantly. 
"  Oh,  no  !  "  she  said,  eagerly  :  "  don't  think 
of  it!  I  must  hurry  home  as  soon  as  I've 
seen  Mr.  Beech."  Janey  went  out  with  an 
obvious  air  of  relief. 

Presently  there  was  a  sound  of  heavy  boots 
out  in  the  kitchen  being  thrown  on  to  the 
floor,  and  then  Abner  came  in.  He  halted 
in  the  doorway,  his  massive  form  seeming  to 
completely  fill  it,  and  devoted  a  moment  or 
so  to  taking  in  the  novel  spectacle  of  a  neigh- 
bor under  his  roof.  Then  he  advanced,  walk- 
ing obliquely  till  he  could  see  distinctly  the 
face  of  the  visitor.  It  stands  to  reason  that 
he  must  have  been  surprised,  but  he  gave  no 
sign  of  it. 

"How  d'  do,  Miss,"  he  said,  with  grave 
politeness,  coming  up  and  offering  her  his 
big  hand. 

Esther  rose  abruptly,  peony-red  with  pleas- 
urable confusion,  and  took  the  hand  stretched 
out  to  her.  "How  d'  do,  Mr.  Beech,"  she 
responded  with  eagerness,  "I  —  I  came  up 
to  see  you — a  —  about  something  that's  very 
pressing." 

"  It's  blowing  up  quite  a  gale  outside,"  the 


126  THE    COPPERHEAD 

farmer  remarked,  evidently  to  gain  time  the 
while  he  scanned  her  face  in  a  solemn, 
thoughtful  way,  noting,  I  doubt  not,  the 
swollen  eyelids  and  stains  of  tears,  and  try- 
ing to  guess  her  errand.  "  Shouldn't  wonder 
if  we  had  a  foot  o'  snow  before  morning." 

The  school-teacher  seemed  in  doubt  how 
best  to  begin  what  she  had  to  say,  so  that 
Abner  had  time,  after  he  lifted  his  inquiring 
gaze  from  her,  to  run  a  master's  eye  over  the 
table. 

"  Have  Janey  lay  another  place  !  "  he  said, 
with  authoritative  brevity. 

As  M'rye  rose  to  obey,  Esther  broke  forth : 
"  Oh,  no,  please  don't  !  Thank  you  so  much, 
Mr.  Beech  —  but  really  I  can't  stop  —  truly, 
I  mustn't  think  of  it." 

The  farmer  merely  nodded  a  confirmation 
of  his  order  to  M'rye,  who  hastened  out  to  the 
kitchen. 

"It'll  be  there  for  ye,  anyway,"  he  said. 
"  Now  set  down  again,  please." 

It  was  all  as  if  he  was  the  one  who  had  the 
news  to  tell,  so  naturally  did  he  take  com- 
mand of  the  situation.  The  girl  seated  her- 
self, and  the  farmer  drew  up  his  armchair 
and  planted  himself  before  her,  keeping  his 


ESTHER'S    VISIT  127 

stockinged  feet  under  the  rungs  for  politeness' 
sake. 

"  Now,  Miss,"  he  began,  just  making  it  civ- 
illy plain  that  he  preferred  not  to  utter  her 
hated  paternal  name,  "  I  don't  know  no  more'n 
a  babe  unborn  what's  brought  you  here.  I'm 
sure,  from  what  I  know  of  ye,  that  you 
wouldn't  come  to  this  house  jest  for  the  sake 
of  comin',  or  to  argy  things  that  can't  be,  an' 
mustn't  be,  argied.  In  one  sense,  we  ain't 
friends  of  yours  here,  and  there's  a  heap  o' 
things  that  you  an'  me  don't  want  to  talk 
about,  because  they'd  only  lead  to  bad  feelin', 
an'  so  we'll  leave  'em  all  severely  alone.  But 
in  another  way,  I've  always  had  a  liking  for 
you.  You're  a  smart  girl,  an'  a  scholar  into 
the  bargain,  an'  there  ain't  so  many  o'  that 
sort  knockin'  around  in  these  parts  that  a  man 
like  myself,  who's  fond  o'  books  an'  learnin', 
wants  to  be  unfriendly  to  them  there  is.  So 
now  you  can  figure  out  pretty  well  where  the 
chalk  line  lays,  and  we'll  walk  on  it." 

Esther  nodded  her  head.  "  Yes,  I  under- 
stand," she  remarked,  and  seemed  not  to  dis- 
like what  Abner  had  said. 

"That  being  so,  what  is  it?"  the  farmer 
asked,  with  his  hands  on  his  knees. 


128  THE    COPPERHEAD 

"  Well,  Mr.  Beech,"  the  school-teacher  be- 
gan, noting  with  a  swift  side-glance  that  M'rye 
had  returned,  and  was  herself  rearranging  the 
table.  "I  don't  think  you  can  have  heard  it, 
but  some  important  news  has  come  in  during 
the  day.  There  seems  to  be  different  stories, 
but  the  grist  of  them  is  that  a  number  of  the 
leading  Union  generals  have  been  discovered 
to  be  traitors,  and  McClellan  has  been  dis- 
missed from  his  place  at  the  head  of  the  army, 
and  ordered  to  return  to  his  home  in  New 
Jersey  under  arrest,  and  they  say  others  are 
to  be  treated  in  the  same  way,  and  Fath  — 
some  people  think  it  will  be  a  hanging  mat- 
ter, and — " 

Abner  waved  all  this  aside  with  a  motion  of 
his  hand.  "  It  don't  amount  to  a  hill  o' 
beans,"  he  said,  placidly.  "  It's  jest  spite, 
because  we  licked  'em  at  the  elections.  Don't 
you  worry  your  head  about  that !  " 

Esther  was  not  reassured.  "  That  isn't  all," 
she  went  on,  nervously.  "  They  say  there's 
been  discovered  a  big  conspiracy,  with  secret 
sympathizers  all  over  the  North." 

"  Pooh  !  "  commented  Abner.  "  We've 
heer'n  tell  o'  that  before  !  " 

"  All  over  the  North,"  she  continued,  "  with 


■Uf^^> 


ESTHER'S    VISIT  129 

the  intention  of  bringing-  across  infected 
clothes  from  Canada,  and  spreading  the  small- 
pox among  us,  and  —  " 

The  farmer  laughed  outright ;  a  laugh 
embittered  by  contempt.  "  What  cock-'n'-bull 
story'll  be  hatched  next !  "  he  said.  "  You 
don't  mean  to  say  you  —  a  girl  with  a  head 
on  her  shoulders  like  you —  give  ear  to  such 
tomfoolery  as  that !  Come,  now,  honest  Injin, 
do  you  mean  to  tell  me  you  believe  all  this?" 

"  It  don't  so  much  matter,  Mr.  Beech,"  the 
girl  replied,  raising  her  face  to  his,  and  speak- 
ing more  confidently  —  "  it  don't  matter  at  all 
what  I  believe.  I'm  talking  of  what  they  be- 
lieve down  at  the  Corners." 

"  The  Corners  be  jiggered ! "  exclaimed 
Abner,  politely,  but  with  emphasis. 

Esther  rose  from  the  chair.  "  Mr.  Beech," 
she  declared,  impressively;  "they're  coming 
up  here  to-night !  That  bonfire  of  yours  made 
'em  mad.  It's  no  matter  how  I  learned  it  — 
it  wasn't  from  father  —  I  don't  know  that  he 
knows  anything  about  it,  but  they're  coming 
here  !  and  —  and  Heaven  only  knows  what 
they're  going  to  do  when  they  get  here  ! " 

The  farmer  rose  also,  his  huge  figure 
towering  above  that  of  the  girl,  as  he  looked 


130  THE    COPPERHEAD 

down  at  her  over  his  beard.  He  no  longer 
dissembled  his  stockinged-feet.  After  a 
moment's  pause  he  said :  "  So  that's  what 
you  came  to  tell  me,  eh  ?  " 

The  school-ma'am  nodded  her  head.  "  I 
couldn't  bear  not  to,"  she  explained,  simply. 

"  Well,  I'm  obleeged  to  ye  !  "  Abner  re- 
marked, with  gravity.  "  Whatever  comes  of 
it,  I'm  obleeged  to  ye  !  " 

He  turned  at  this,  and  walked  slowly  out 
into  the  kitchen,  leaving  the  door  open  behind 
him.  "  Pull  on  your  boots  again  !  "  we  heard 
him  say,  presumably  to  Hurley.  In  a  minute 
or  two  he  returned,  with  his  own  boots  on, 
and  bearing  over  his  arm  the  old  double- 
barrelled  shot-gun  which  always  hung  above 
the  kitchen  mantel-piece.  In  his  hands  he 
had  two  shot-flasks,  the  little  tobacco-bag  full 
of  buckshot,  and  a  powder-horn.  He  laid 
these  on  the  open  shelf  of  the  bookcase,  and, 
after  fitting  fresh  caps  on  the  nipples  put  the 
gun  beside  them. 

"  I'd  be  all  the  more  sot  on  your  stayin'  to 
supper,"  he  remarked,  looking  again  at  Esther, 
"  only  if  there  should  be  any  unpleasantness, 
why,  I'd  hate  like  sin  to  have  you  mixed  up 
in  it.     You  see  how  I'm  placed." 


ESTHER'S    VISIT  131 

Esther  did  not  hesitate  a  moment.  She 
walked  over  to  where  M'rye  stood  by  the 
table  replenishing  the  butter-plate.  "  I'd  be 
very  glad  indeed  to  stay,  Mr.  Beech,"  she 
said,  with  winning  frankness,  "  if  I  may." 

"  There's  the  place  laid  for  you,"  com- 
mented M'rye,  impassively.  Then,  catching 
her  husband's  eye,  she  added  the  perfunctory 
assurance    "  You're  entirely  welcome." 

Hurley  and  the  girls  came  in  now,  and  all 
except  me  took  their  seats  about  the  table. 
Both  Abner  and  the  Irishman  had  their  coats 
on,  out  of  compliment  to  company.  M'rye 
brought  over  a  thick  slice  of  fresh  buttered 
bread  with  brown  sugar  on  it,  and  a  cup  of 
weak  tea,  and  put  them  beside  me  on  a  chair. 
Then  the  evening  meal  went  forward,  the 
farmer  talking  in  a  fragmentary  way  about 
the  crops  and  the  weather.  Save  for  an  oc- 
casional response  from  our  visitor,  the  rest 
maintained  silence.  The  Underwood  girl 
could  not  keep  her  fearful  eyes  from  the  gun 
lying  on  the  bookcase,  and  protested  that  she 
had  no  appetite,  but  Hurley  ate  vigorously, 
and  had  a  smile  on  his  wrinkled  and  swarthy 
little  face. 

The   wind  outside  whistled  shrilly  at  the 


132  THE    COPPERHEAD 

windows,  rattling  the  shutters,  and  trying  its 
force  in  explosive  blasts  which  seemed  to 
rock  the  house  on  its  stone  foundations. 
Once  or  twice  it  shook  the  veranda-door  with 
such  violence  that  the  folk  at  the  table  in- 
stinctively lifted  their  heads,  thinking  some- 
one was  there. 

Then,  all  at  once,  above  the  confusion  of 
the  storm's  noises,  we  heard  a  voice  rise,  high 
and  clear,  crying : 

"  Smoke  the  damned  Copperhead  out !  " 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  FIRE 

"  That  was  Roselle  Upman  that  hollered," 
remarked  Janey  Wilcox,  breaking  the  agi- 
tated silence  which  had  fallen  upon  the  sup- 
per table.  "  You  can  tell  it's  him  because  he's 
had  all  his  front  teeth  pulled  out." 

"  I  wasn't  born  in  the  woods  to  be  skeert  by 
an  owl !  "  replied  Abner,  with  a  great  show 
of  tranquillity,  helping  himself  to  another 
slice  of  bread.  "  Miss,  you  ain't  half  makin' 
out  a  supper ! " 

But  this  bravado  could  not  maintain  itself. 
In  another  minute  there  came  a  loud  chorus 
of  angry  yells,  heightened  at  its  finish  by  two 
or  three  pistol  shots.  Then  Abner  pushed 
back  his  chair  and  rose  slowly  to  his  feet,  and 
the  rest  sprang  up  all  around  the  table. 

"  Hurley,"    said  the  farmer,    speaking   as 

deliberately  as  he  knew  how,  doubtless  with 

the  idea  of  reassuring  the  others,  "you  go 

out  into  the  kitchen  with  the  women  folks, 

133 


134  THE   COPPERHEAD 

an'  bar  the  woodshed  door,  an'  bring  in  the 
axe  with  you  to  stan'  guard  over  the  kitchen 
door.  I'll  look  out  for  this  part  o'  the  house 
myself." 

"  I  want  to  stay  in  here  with  you,  Abner," 
said  M'rye. 

"  No,  you  go  out  with  the  others ! "  com- 
manded the  master  with  firmness,  and  so 
they  all  filed  out  with  no  hint  whatever  of 
me.  The  shadow  of  the  lamp-shade  had  cut 
me  off  altogether  from  their  thoughts. 

Perhaps  it  is  not  surprising  that  my  recol- 
lections of  what  now  ensued  should  lack 
definiteness  and  sequence.  The  truth  is, 
that  my  terror  at  my  own  predicament,  sit- 
ting there  with  no  covering  for  my  feet  and 
calves  but  the  burdock  leaves  and  that  absurd 
shawl,  swamped  everything  else  in  my  mind. 
Still,  I  do  remember  some  of  it. 

Abner  strode  across  to  the  bookcase  and 
took  up  the  gun,  his  big  thumb  resting  deter- 
minedly on  the  hammers.  Then  he  inarched 
to  the  door,  threw  it  wide  open,  and  planted 
himself  on  the  threshold,  looking  out  into 
the  darkness. 

"  What's  your  business  here,  whoever  you 
are  ?  "  he  called  out,  in  deep  defiant  tones. 


THE  FIRE  135 

"We've  come  to  take  you  an'  Paddy  out 
for  a  little  ride  on  a  rail ! "  answered  the 
same  shrill,  mocking  voice  we  had  heard 
at  first.  Then  others  took  up  the  hostile 
chorus.  "  We've  got  some  pitch  a-heatin' 
round  in  the  back  yard !  "  "  You  won't 
catch  cold;  there's  plenty  o'  feathers!" 
"  Tell  the  Irishman  here's  some  more  ears 
for  him  to  chaw  on  !  "  "  Come  out  an'  take 
your  Copperhead  medicine  !  " 

There  were  yet  other  cries  which  the 
howling  wind  tore  up  into  inarticulate  frag- 
ments, and  then  a  scattering  volley  of  cheers, 
again  emphasized  by  pistol-shots.  While 
the  crack  of  these  still  chilled  my  blood,  a 
more  than  usually  violent  gust  swooped 
round  Abner's  burly  figure,  and  blew  out  the 
lamp. 

Terrifying  as  the  first  instant  of  utter 
darkness  was,  the  second  was  recognizable 
as  a  relief.  I  at  once  threw  myself  out  of 
the  chair,  and  crept  along  back  of  the  stove 
to  where  my  stockings  and  boots  had  been 
put  to  dry.  These  I  hastened,  with  much 
trembling  awkwardness,  to  pull  on,  taking 
pains  to  keep  the  big  square  old  stove  be- 
tween me  and  that  open  veranda  door. 


136  THE    COPPERHEAD 

"  Guess  we  won't  take  no  ride  to-night ! " 
I  heard  Abner  roar  out,  after  the  shouting 
had  for  the  moment  died  away. 

"  You  got  to  have  one !  "  came  back  the 
original  voice.  "It's  needful  for  your  com- 
plaint ! " 

"I've  got  somethin'  here  that'll  fit  your 
complaint ! "  bellowed  the  farmer,  raising 
•  his  gun.  "Take  warnin' — -the  first  cuss 
that  sets  foot  on  this  stoop,  I'll  bore  a  four- 
inch  hole  clean  through  him.  I've  got  squir- 
rel shot,  an'  I've  got  buck-shot,  an'  there's 
plenty  more  behind  —  so  take  your  choice  !  " 

There  were  a  good  many  derisive  answer- 
ing yells  and  hoots,  and  someone  again  fired 
a  pistol  in  the  air,  but  nobody  offered  to 
come  up  on  the  veranda. 

Emboldened  by  this,  I  stole  across  the 
room  now  to  one  of  the  windows,  and  lifting 
a  corner  of  the  shade,  strove  to  look  out.  At 
first  there  was  nothing  whatever  to  be  seen 
in  the  utter  blackness.  Then  I  made  out 
some  faint  reddish  sort  of  diffused  light  in 
the  upper  air,  which  barely  sufficed  to  indi- 
cate the  presence  of  some  score  or  more  dark 
figures  out  in  the  direction  of  the  pump. 
Evidently  they  had  built  a  fire  around  in  the 


THE  FIBE  137 

back  yard,  as  they  said  —  probably  starting 
it  there  so  that  its  light  might  not  disclose 
their  identity. 

This  looked  as  if  they  really  meant  to 
tar-and-feather  Abner  and  Hurley.  The  ex- 
pression was  familiar  enough  to  my  ears,  and, 
from  pictures  in  stray  illustrated  weeklies 
that  found  their  way  to  the  Corners,  I  had 
gathered  some  general  notion  of  the  proced- 
ure involved.  The  victim  was  stripped,  I 
knew,  and  daubed  over  with  hot  melted 
pitch ;  then  a  pillow-case  of  feathers  was 
emptied  over  him,  and  he  was  forced  astride 
a  fence-rail,  which  the  rabble  hoisted  on  their 
shoulders  and  ran  about  with.  But  my  fancy 
balked  at  and  refused  the  task  of  imagining 
Abner  Beech  in  this  humiliating  posture. 
At  least  it  was  clear  to  my  mind  that  a  good 
many  fierce  and  bloody  things  would  happen 
first. 

Apparently  this  had  become  clear  to  the 
throng  outside  as  well.  Whole  minutes  had 
gone  by,  and  still  no  one  mounted  the  ver- 
anda to  seek  close  quarters  with  the  farmer 
—  who  stood  braced  with  his  legs  wide  apart, 
bare-headed  and  erect,  the  wind  blowing  his 
huge  beard  sidewise  over  his  shoulder. 


138  THE    COPPERHEAD 

"Well!  ain't  none  o'  you  a-comin'?"  he 
called  out  at  last,  with  impatient  sarcasm. 
"  Thought  you  was  so  sot  on  takin'  me  out 
an'  havin'  some  fun  with  me  !  "  After  a  brief 
pause,  another  taunt  occurred  to  him.  "  Why, 
even  the  niggers  you're  so  in  love  with,"  he 
shouted,  "  they  ain't  such  dod-rotted  cowards 
as  you  be  !  " 

A  general  movement  was  discernible  among 
the  shadowy  forms  outside.  I  thought  for 
the  instant  that  it  meant  a  swarming  attack 
upon  the  veranda.  But  no!  suddenly  it  had 
grown  much  lighter,  and  the  mob  was  mov- 
ing away  toward  the  rear  of  the  house.  The 
men  were  shouting  things  to  one  another, 
but  the  wind  for  the  moment  was  at  such  a 
turbulent  pitch  that  all  their  words  were 
drowned.  The  reddened  light  waxed  brighter 
still  —  and  now  there  was  nobody  to  be  seen 
at  all  from  the  window. 

"  Hurry  here !  Mr.  Beech !  We're  all 
afire  !  "  cried  a  frightened  voice  in  the  room 
behind  me. 

It  may  be  guessed  how  I  turned. 

The  kitchen  door  was  open,  and  the  figure 
of  a  woman  stood  on  the  threshold,  indefi- 
nitely black  against  a  strange  yellowish-drab 


THE  FIRE  139 

half  light  which  framed  it.  This  woman 
—  one  knew  from  the  voice  that  it  was 
Esther  Hagaclorn  —  seemed  to  be  wringing 
her  hands. 

"  Hurry !  Hurry  !  "  she  cried  again,  and  I 
could  see  now  that  the  little  passage  was  full 
of  gray  luminous  smoke,  which  was  drifting 
past  her  into  the  living-room.  Even  as  I 
looked,  it  had  half  obscured  her  form,  and 
was  rolling  in,  in  waves. 

Abner  had  heard  her,  and  strode  across 
the  room  now,  gun  still  in  hand,  into  the 
thick  of  the  smoke,  pushing  Esther  before 
him  and  shutting  the  kitchen  door  with  a 
bang  as  he  passed  through.  I  put  in  a  terri- 
fied minute  or  two  alone  in  the  dark,  amazed 
and  half-benumbed  by  the  confused  sounds 
that  at  first  came  from  the  kitchen,  and 
by  the  horrible  suspense,  when  a  still  more 
sinister  silence  ensued.  Then  there  rose  a 
loud  crackling  noise,  like  the  incessant  pop- 
ping of  some  giant  variety  of  corn.  The 
door  burst  open  again,  and  M'rye's  tall  form 
seemed  literally  flung  into  the  room  by  the 
sweeping  volume  of  dense  smoke  which 
poured  in.  She  pulled  the  door  to  behind 
her  —  then  gave  a  snarl  of  excited  emotion 


140  THE   COPPERHEAD 

at  seeing  me  by  the  dusky  reddened  radiance 
which  began  forcing  its  way  from  outside 
through  the  holland  window  shades. 

•  "  Light  the  lamp,  you  gump ! "  she  com- 
manded, breathlessly,  and  fell  with  fierce 
concentration  upon  the  task  of  dragging  fur- 
niture out  from  the  bed-room.  I  helped  her 
in  a  frantic,  bewildered  fashion,  after  I  had 
lighted  the  lamp,  which  flared  and  smoked 
without  its  shade,  as  we  toiled.  M'rye 
seemed  all  at  once  to  have  the  strength  of 
a  dozen  men.  She  swung  the  ponderous 
chest  of  drawers  out  end  on  end;  she  fairly 
lifted  the  still  bigger  bookcase,  after  I  had 
hustled  the  books  out  on  to  the  table ;  she 
swept  off  the  bedding,  slashed  the  cords,  and 
jerked  the  bed-posts  and  side-pieces  out  of 
their  connecting  sockets  with  furious  energy, 
till  it  seemed  as  if  both  rooms  must  have 
been  dismantled  in  less  time  than  I  have 
taken  to  tell  of  it. 

The  crackling  overhead  had  swollen  now 
to  a  wrathful  roar,  rising  above  the  gusty 
voices  of  the  wind.  The  noise,  the  heat,  the 
smoke,  and  terror  of  it  all  made  me  sick  and 
faint.  I  grew  dizzy,  and  did  foolish  things 
in  an  aimless  way,  fumbling   about   among 


THE  FIRE  141 

the  stuff  M'rye  was  hurling  forth.  Then  all 
at  once  her  darkling,  smoke-wrapped  figure 
shot  up  to  an  enormous  height,  the  lamp 
began  to  go  round,  and  I  felt  myself  with 
nothing  but  space  under  my  feet,  plunging 
downward  with  awful  velocity,  surrounded 
by  whirling  skies  full  of  stars. 

There  was  a  black  night-sky  overhead 
when  I  came  to  my  senses  again,  with  flecks 
of  snow  in  the  cold  air  on  my  face.  The 
wind  had  fallen,  everything  was  as  still  as 
death,  and  someone  was  carrying  me  in  his 
arms.     I  tried  to  lift  my  head. 

"  Aisy  now  !  "  came  Hurley's  admonitory 
voice,  close  to  my  ear.  "  We'll  be  there  in  a 
minyut." 

"  No  —  I'm  all  right  —  let  me  down,"  I 
urged.  He  set  me  on  my  feet,  and  I  looked 
amazedly  about  me. 

The  red-brown  front  of  our  larger  hay-barn 
loomed  in  a  faint  unnatural  light,  at  close 
quarters,  upon  my  first  inquiring  gaze.  The 
big  sliding  doors  were  open,  and  the  slanting 
wagon-bridge  running  down  from  their  thresh- 
old was  piled  high  with  chairs,  bedding, 
crockery,  milk-pans,  clothing  —  the  jumbled 


142  THE    COPPERHEAD 

remnants  of  our  household  gods.  Turning,  I 
looked  across  the  yard  upon  what  was  left  of 
the  Beech  homestead  —  a  glare  of  cherry  light 
glowing  above  a  fiery  hole  in  the  ground. 

Strangely  enough  this  glare  seemed  to  per- 
petuate in  its  outlines  the  shape  and  dimen- 
sions of  the  vanished  house.  It  was  as  if  the 
house  were  still  there,  but  transmuted  from 
joists  and  clap-boards  and  shingles,  into  an 
illuminated  and  impalpable  ghost  of  itself. 
There  was  a  weird  effect  of  transparency 
about  it.  Through  the  spectral  bulk  of  red 
light  I  could  see  the  naked  and  gnarled  ap- 
ple-trees in  the  home-orchard  on  the  further 
side  ;  and  I  remembered  at  once  that  painful 
and  striking  parallel  of  Scrooge  gazing 
through  the  re-edified  body  of  Jacob  Marley, 
and  beholding  the  buttons  at  the  back  of  his 
coat.     It  all  seemed  some  monstrous  dream. 

But  no,  here  the  others  were.  Janey  Wil- 
cox and  the  Underwood  girl  had  come  out 
from  the  barn,  and  were  carrying  in  more 
things.  I  perceived  now  that  there  was  a 
candle  burning  inside,  and  presently  Esther 
Hagadorn  was  to  be  seen.  Hurley  had  dis- 
appeared, and  so  I  went  up  the  sloping  plat- 
form to  join  the  women  —  noting  with  weak 


THE  FIEE  143 

surprise  that  my  knees  seemed  to  have  ac- 
quired new  double  joints  and  behaved  as  if 
they  were  going  in  the  other  direction.  I 
stumbled  clumsity  once  I  was  inside  the  barn, 
and  sat  down  with  great  abruptness  on  a 
milking-stool,  leaning  my  head  back  against 
the  hay-mow,  and  conscious  of  entire  indiffer- 
ence as  to  whether  school  kept  or  not. 

Again  it  was  like  some  half-waking  vision 
—  the  feeble  light  of  the  candle  losing  itself 
upon  the  broad  high  walls  of  new  hay;  the 
huge  shadows  in  the  rafters  overhead ;  the 
women-folk  silently  moving  about,  fixing  up 
on  the  barn  floor  some  pitiful  imitation,  poor 
souls,  of  the  home  that  had  been  swept  off  the 
face  of  the  earth,  and  outside,  through  the 
wide  sprawling  doors,  the  dying  away  efful- 
gence of  the  embers  of  our  roof-tree  lingering 
in  the  air  of  the  winter  night. 

Abner  Beech  came  in  presently,  with  the 
gun  in  one  hand,  and  a  blackened  and  out- 
landish-looking object  in  the  other,  which 
turned  out  to  be  the  big  pink  sea-shell  that 
used  to  decorate  the  parlor  mantel.  He  held 
it  up  for  M'rye  to  see,  with  a  grave,  tired 
smile  on  his  face. 

"  We  got  it  out,  after  all  —  just  by  the  skin 


144  THE    COPPERHEAD 

of  our  teeth,"  he  said,  and  Hurley,  behind 
him,  confirmed  this  by  an  eloquent  grimace. 

M'rye's  black  eyes  snapped  and  sparkled  as 
she  lifted  the  candle  and  saw  what  this  some- 
thing was.  Then  she  boldly  put  up  her  face 
and  kissed  her  husband  with  a  resounding 
smack.     Truly  it  was  a  night  of  surprises. 

"  That's  about  the  only  thing  I  had  to  call 
my  own  when  I  was  married,"  she  offered  in 
explanation  of  her  fervor,  speaking  to  the 
company  at  large.  Then  she  added  in  a 
lower  tone,  to  Esther:  uHe  used  to  play  with 
it  for  hours  at  a  stretch  —  when  he  was  a 
baby." 

"  'Member  how  he  used  to  hold  it  up  to  his 
ear,  eh,  mother?"  asked  A bner,  softly. 

M'rye  nodded  her  head,  and  then  put  her 
apron  up  to  her  eyes  for  a  brief  moment. 
When  she  lowered  it,  we  saw  an  unaccus- 
tomed smile  mellowing  her  hard-set,  swarthy 
face. 

The  candle  light  flashed  upon  a  tear  on  her 
cheek  that  the  apron  had  missed. 

"  I  guess  I  do  remember ! "  she  said,  with 
a  voice  full  of  tenderness. 

Then  Esther's  hand  stole  into  M'rye's  and 
the  two  women  stood  together  before  Abner, 


THE  FIRE  145 

erect  and  with  beaming  countenances,  and  he 
smiled  upon  them  both. 

It  seemed  that  we  were  all  much  happier 
in  our  minds,  now  that  our  house  had  been 
burned  down  over  our  heads. 


CHAPTER   XI 

THE   CONQUEST   OF   ABNER 

Some  time  during  the  night,  I  was  awak- 
ened by  the  mice  frisking  through  the  hay 
about  my  ears.  My  head  was  aching  again, 
and  I  could  not  get  back  into  sleep.  Besides, 
Hurley  was  snoring  mercilessly. 

We  two  had  chosen  for  our  resting-place 
the  little  mow  of  half  a  load  or  so,  which  had 
not  been  stowed  away  above,  but  lay  ready 
for  present  use  over  by  the  side-door  opening 
on  the  cow-yard.  Temporary  beds  had  been 
spread  for  the  women  with  fresh  straw  and 
blankets  at  the  further  end  of  the  central 
threshing-floor.  Abner  himself  had  taken 
one  of  the  rescued  ticks  and  a  quilt  over  to 
the  other  end,  and  stretched  his  ponderous 
length  out  across  the  big  doors,  with  the  gun 
by  his  side.  No  one  had,  of  course,  dreamed 
of  undressing. 

Only  a  few  minutes  of  wakefulness  sufficed 
to  throw  me  into  a  desperate  state  of  fidgets. 

146 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  ABNEB  147 

The  hay  seemed  full  of  strange  creeping 
noises.  The  whole  big  barn  echoed  with  the 
boisterous  ticking  of  the  old  eight-clay  clock 
which  had  been  saved  from  the  wreck  of  the 
kitchen,  and  which  M'rye  had  set  going  again 
on  the  seat  of  the  democrat  wagon.  And 
then  Hurley ! 

I  began  to  be  convinced,  now,  that  I  was 
coming  down  with  a  great  spell  of  sickness 
—  perhaps  even  "the  fever."  Yes,  it  un- 
doubtedly was  the  fever.  I  could  feel  it  in 
my  bones,  which  now  started  up  queer  prickly 
sensations  on  novel  lines,  quite  as  if  they 
were  somebody  else's  bones  instead.  My 
breathing,  indeed,  left  a  good  deal  to  be 
desired  from  the  true  fever  standpoint.  It 
was  not  nearly  so  rapid  or  convulsive  as  I 
understood  that  the  breathing  of  a  genuine 
fever  victim  ought  to  be.  But  that,  no  doubt, 
would  come  soon  enough  —  nay  !  was  it  not 
already  coming?  I  thought,  upon  examina- 
tion, that  I  did  breathe  more  swiftly  than 
before.     And  oh !  that  Hurley  ! 

As  noiselessly  as  possible  I  made  my  way, 
half-rolling,  half-sliding,  off  the  hay,  and  got 
on  my  feet  on  the  floor.  It  was  pitch  dark, 
but  I  could  feel  along  the  old  disused  stan- 


148  THE    COPPERHEAD 

chion-row  to  the  corner ;  thence  it  was  plain 
sailing  over  to  where  Abner  was  sleeping  by 
the  big  front  doors.  I  would  not  dream  of 
rousing  him  if  he  was  in  truth  asleep,  but  it 
would  be  something  to  be  nigh  him,  in  case 
the  fever  should  take  a  fatal  turn  before 
morning.  I  would  just  cuddle  down  on  the 
floor  near  to  him,  and  await  events. 

When  I  had  turned  the  corner,  it  surprised 
me  greatly  to  see  ahead  of  me,  over  at  the 
front  of  the  barn,  the  reflection  of  a  light. 
Creeping  along  toward  it,  I  came  out  upon 
Abner,  seated  with  his  back  against  one  of 
the  doors,  looking  over  an  account-book  by 
the  aid  of  a  lantern  perched  on  a  box  at  his 
side.  He  had  stood  the  frame  of  an  old  bob- 
sleigh on  end  close  by,  and  hung  a  horse- 
blanket  over  it,  so  that  the  light  might  not 
disturb  the  women-folk  at  the  other  end  of 
the  barn.  The  gun  lay  on  the  floor  beside 
him. 

He  looked  up  at  my  approach,  and  regarded 
me  with  something,  I  fancied,  of  disapproba- 
tion in  his  habitually  grave  expression. 

"  Well,  old  seventy-six,  what's  the  matter 
with  you?  "  he  asked,  keeping  his  voice  down 
to  make  as  little  noise  as  possible. 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  ABNEE  149 

I  answered  in  the  same  cautious  tones  that 
I  was  feeling  bad.  Had  any  encouragement 
suggested  itself  in  the  farmer's  mien,  I  was 
prepared  to  overwhelm  him  with  a  relation 
of  my  symptoms  in  detail.  But  he  shook  his 
head  instead. 

"You'll  have  to  wait  till  morning,  to  be- 
sick,"  he  said  — "  that  is,  to  get  'tended  to. 
I  don't  know  anything  about  such  things,  an' 
I  wouldn't  wake  M'rye  up  now  for  a  whole 
baker's  dozen  o'  you  chaps."  Seeing  my  face 
fall  at  this  sweeping  declaration,  he  proceeded 
to  modify  it  in  a  kindlier  tone.  "  Now  you 
just  lay  down  again,  sonny,"  he  added,  "  an' 
you'll  be  to  sleep  in  no  time,  an'  in  the  morn- 
ing M'rye  '11  fix  up  something  for  ye.  This 
ain't  no  fit  time  for  white  folks  to  be  belly- 
achin'  around." 

"  I  kind  o'  thought  I'd  feel  better  if  I  was 
sleeping  over  here  near  you,"  I  ventured  now 
to  explain,  and  his  nod  was  my  warrant  for 
tiptoeing  across  to  the  heap  of  disorganized 
furniture,  and  getting  out  some  blankets  and 
a  comforter,  which  I  arranged  in  the  corner 
a  few  yards  away  and  simply  rolled  myself 
up  in,  with  my  face  turned  away  from  the 
light.     It   was   better   over   here   than  with 


150  THE    COPPERHEAD 

Hurley,  and  though  that  prompt  sleep  which 
the  farmer  had  promised  did  not  come,  I  at 
least  was  drowsily  conscious  of  an  improved 
physical  condition. 

Perhaps  I  drifted  off  more  than  half-way  into 
dreamland,  for  it  was  with  a  start  that  all  at 
once  I  heard  someone  close  by  talking  with 
Abner. 

"  I  saw  you  were  up,  Mr.  Beech  "  —  it  was 
Esther  Hagadorn  who  spoke  —  "  and  I  don't 
seem  able  to  sleep,  and  I  thought,  if  you  didn't 
mind,  I'd  come  over  here." 

"  Why,  of  course,"  the  farmer  responded. 
"  Just  bring  up  a  chair  there,  an'  sit  down. 
That's  it  —  wrap  the  shawl  around  you  good. 
It's  a  cold  night  —  snowin'  hard  outside." 

Both  had  spoken  in  muffled  tones,  so  as 
not  to  disturb  the  others.  This  same  domi- 
nant notion  of  keeping  still  deterred  me  from 
turning  over,  in  order  to  be  able  to  see  them. 
I  expected  to  hear  them  discuss  my  illness, 
but  they  never  referred  to  it.  Instead,  there 
was  what  seemed  a  long  silence.  Then  the 
school-ma'am  spoke. 

"  I  can't  begin  to  tell  you,"  she  said,  "  how 
glad  I  am  that  you  and  your  wife  aren't  a  bit 
cast  down  by  the  —  the  calamity." 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  ABNER  151 

"No,"  came  back  Abner's  voice,  buoyant 
even  in  its  half-whisper,  "we're  all  right. 
I've  be'n  sort  o'  figurin'  up  here,  an'  they 
ain't  much  real  harm  done.  I'm  insured 
pretty  well.  Of  course,  this  bein'  obleeged 
to  camp  out  in  a  hay-barn  might  be  improved 
on,  but  then  it's  a  change  —  somethin'  out  o' 
the  ordinary  rut  —  an'  it'll  do  us  good.  I'll 
have  the  carpenters  over  from  Juno  Mills  in 
the  forenoon,  an'  if  they  push  things,  we  can 
have  a  roof  over  us  again  before  Christmas. 
It  could  be  done  even  sooner,  p'raps,  only 
they  ain't  any  neighbors  to  help  me  with  a 
raisin'  bee.  They're  willin'  enough  to  burn  my 
house  down,  though.  However,  I  don't  want 
them  not  an  atom  more'n  they  want  me." 

There  was  no  trace  of  anger  in  his  voice. 
He  spoke  like  one  contemplating  the  unalter- 
able conditions  of  life. 

"  Did  they  really,  do  you  believe,  set  it  on 
fire  ?  "  Esther  asked,  intently. 

"  No,  I  think  it  caught  from  that  fool-fire 
they  started  around  back  of  the  house,  to 
heat  their  fool  tar  by.  The  wind  was  blow- 
ing a  regular  gale,  you  know.  Janey  Wilcox, 
she  will  have  it  that  that  Roselle  Upman  set 
it  on  purpose.     But  then,  she  don't  like  him 


152  THE    COPPERHEAD 

—  an'  I  can't  blame  her  much,  for  that  matter. 
Once  Otis  Barnum  was  seem'  her  home  from 
singin'  school,  an'  when  he  was  goin'  back 
alone  this  Roselle  Upman  waylaid  him  in  the 
dark,  an'  pitched  onto  him,  an'  broke  his  col- 
lar-bone. I  always  thought  it  puffed  Janey 
up  some,  this  bein'  fought  over  like  that,  but 
it  made  her  mad  to  have  Otis  hurt  on  her 
account,  an'  then  nothing  come  of  it.  I 
wouldn't  a'  minded  pepperin'  Roselle's  legs 
a  trifle,  if  I'd  had  a  barrel  loaded,  say,  with 
birdshot.  He's  a  nuisance  to  the  whole 
neighborhood.  He  kicks  up  a  fight  at  every 
dance  he  goes  to,  all  winter  long,  an'  hangs 
around  the  taverns  day  in  an'  day  out,  in- 
ducin'  young  men  to  drink  an'  loaf.  I 
thought  a  fellow  like  him  'd  be  sure  to  go 
off  to  the  war,  an'  so  good  riddance  ;  but 
no  !  darned  if  the  coward  don't  go  an'  get 
his  front  teeth  pulled,  so  't  he  can't  bite 
ca'tridges,  an'  jest  stay  around,  a  worse  nui- 
sance than  ever !  I'd  half  forgive  that  mis- 
erable war  if  it  —  only  took  off  the  —  the 
right  men." 

"  Mr.  Beech,"  said  Esther,  in  low  fervent 
tones,  measuring  each  word  as  it  fell,  "  you 
and  I,  we  must  forgive  that  war  together  !  " 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  ABNER  153 

I  seemed  to  feel  the  farmer  shaking  his 
head.     He  said  nothing  in  reply. 

"  I'm  beginning  to  understand  how  you've 
felt  about  it  all  along,"  the  girl  went  on,  after 
a  pause.  "  I  knew  the  fault  must  be  in  my 
ignorance,  that  our  opinions  of  plain  right 
and  plain  wrong  should  be  such  poles  apart. 
I  got  a  school-friend  of  mine,  whose  father  is 
your  way  of  thinking,  to  send  me  all  the 
papers  that  came  to  their  house,  and  I've 
been  going  through  them  religiously  —  when- 
ever I  could  be  quite  alone.  I  don't  say  I 
don't  think  you're  wrong,  because  I  do,  but 
I  am  getting  to  understand  how  you  should 
believe  yourself  to  be  right." 

She  paused  as  if  expecting  a  reply,  but 
Abner  only  said,  "  Go  on,"  after  some  hesita- 
tion, and  she  went  on  : 

"  Now  take  the  neighbors  all  about  here  —  " 

"Excuse  me!"  broke  in  the  farmer.  "I 
guess  if  it's  all  the  same  to  you,  I'd  rather 
not.     They're  too  rich  for  my  blood." 

"  Take  these  very  neighbors,"  pursued 
Esther,  with  gentle  determination.  "  Some- 
thing must  be  very  wrong  indeed  when  they 
behave  to  you  the  way  they  do.  Why  I 
know  that   even  now,  right  down   in   their 


154  THE    COPPERHEAD 

hearts,  they  recognize  that  you're  far  and 
away  the  best  man  in  Agrippa.  Why,  I  re- 
member, Mr.  Beech,  when  I  first  applied,  and 
you  were  school-commissioner,  and  you  sat 
there  through  the  examination  —  why,  you 
were  the  only  one  whose  opinion  I  gave  a  rap 
for.  When  you  praised  me,  why,  I  was 
prouder  of  it  than  if  you  had  been  a  Regent 
of  the  University.  And  I  tell  you,  every- 
body all  around  here  feels  at  bottom  just 
as  I  do." 

"  They  take  a  dummed  curious  way  o' 
showin'  it,  then,"  commented  Abner,  roundly. 

"  It  isn't  that  they're  trying  to  show  at 
all,"  said  Esther.  "  They  feel  that  other 
things  are  more  important.  They're  all 
wrought  up  over  the  war.  How  could  it  be 
otherwise  when  almost  everyone  of  them  has 
got  a  brother,  or  a  father,  or  —  or  —  a  son  — 
down  there  in  the  South,  and  every  day 
brings  news  that  some  of  these  have  been 
shot  dead,  and  more  still  wounded  and 
crippled,  and  others  —  others,  that  God  only 
knows  what  has  become  of  them  —  oh,  how 
can  they  help  feeling  that  way?  I  don't 
know  that  I  ought  to  say  it — "  the  school- 
ma'am  stopped  to  catch  her  breath,  and  hesi- 


THE   CONQUEST  OF  ABNER  155 

tated,  then  went  on  —  "  but  yes,  you'll 
understand  me  now  —  there  was  a  time  here, 
not  so  long  ago,  Mr.  Beech,  when  I  downright 
hated  you  —  you  and  M'rye  both!" 

This  was  important  enough  to  turn  over 
for.  I  flopped  as  unostentatiously  as  possi- 
ble, and  neither  of  them  gave  any  sign  of 
having  noted  my  presence.  The  farmer  sat 
with  his  back  against  the  door,  the  quilt  drawn 
up  to  his  waist,  his  head  bent  in  silent  medi- 
tation. His  whole  profile  was  in  deep  shadow 
from  where  I  lay  —  darkly  massive  and  power- 
ful and  solemn .  Esther  was  watching  him  with 
all  her  eyes,  leaning  forward  from  her  chair, 
the  lantern-light  full  upon  her  eager  face. 

"  M'rye  an'  I  don't  lay  ourselves  out  to  be 
specially  bad  folks,  as  folks  go,"  the  farmer 
said  at  last,  by  way  of  deprecation.  "  We've 
got  our  faults,  of  course,  like  the  rest,  but  —  " 

"  No,"  interrupted  Esther,  with  a  half- 
tearful  smile  in  her  eyes.  "  You  only  pre- 
tend to  have  faults.  You  really  haven't  got 
any  at  all." 

The  shadowed  outline  of  Abner's  face 
softened.  "Why,  that  is  a  fault  itself,  ain't 
it  ?  "  he  said,  as  if  pleased  with  his  logical 
acuteness. 


156  THE    COPPERHEAD 

The  crowing  of  some  foolish  rooster,  grown 
tired  of  waiting  for  the  belated  November 
daylight,  fell  upon  the  silence  from  one  of 
the  buildings  near  by. 

Abner  Beech  rose  to  his  feet  with  ponder- 
ous slowness,  pushing  the  bedclothes  aside 
with  his  boot,  and  stood  beside  Esther's  chair. 
He  laid  his  big  hand  on  her  shoulder  with  a 
patriarchal  gesture. 

"  Come  now,"  he  said,  gently,  "  you  go 
back  to  bed,  like  a  good  girl,  an'  get  some 
sleep.     It'll  be  all  right." 

The  girl  rose  in  turn,  bearing  her  shoulder 
so  that  the  fatherly  hand  might  still  remain 
upon  it.  "  Truly  ?  "  she  asked,  with  a  new 
light  upon  her  pale  face. 

"  Yes  —  truly  !  "  Abner  replied,  gravely 
nodding  his  head. 

Esther  took  the  hand  from  her  shoulder, 
and  shook  it  in  both  of  hers.  "  Good-night 
again,  then,"  she  said,  and  turned  to  go. 

Suddenly  there  resounded  the  loud  rap- 
ping of  a  stick  on  the  barn-door,  close  by  my 
head. 

Abner  squared  his  huge  shoulders  and 
threw  a  downright  glance  at  the  gun  on  the 
floor. 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  ABNEB  157 

"Well?  "he  called  out. 

"  Is  my  doHater  inside  there  f  " 

We  all  knew  that  thin,  high-pitched,  queru- 
lous voice.  It  was  old  "  Jee  "  Hagadorn  who 
was  outside. 


CHAPTER   XII 

THE    UNWELCOME   GUEST 

Abner  and  Esther  stood  for  a  bewildered 
minute,  staring  at  the  rough  unpainted  boards 
through  which  this  astonishing  inquiry  had 
come.  I  scrambled  to  my  feet  and  kicked 
aside  the  tick  and  blankets.  Whatever  else 
happened,  it  did  not  seem  likely  that  there 
was  any  more  sleeping  to  be  done.  Then  the 
farmer  strode  forward  and  dragged  one  of  the 
doors  back  on  its  squeaking  rollers.  Some 
snow  fell  in  upon  his  boots  from  the  ridge 
that  had  formed  against  it  over  night.  Save 
for  a  vaguely  faint  snow-light  in  the  air,  it 
was  still  dark. 

"  Yes,  she's  here,"  said  Abner,  with  his  hand 
on  the  open  door. 

"  Then  I'd  like  to  know  —  "  the  invisible 
Jee  began  excitedly  shouting  from  without. 

"  Sh-h !  You'll  wake  everybody  up  !  "  the 
farmer  interposed.  "  Come  inside,  so  that 
I  can  shut  the  door." 

158 


THE   UNWELCOME  GUEST  159 

"  Never  under  your  roof !  "  came  back  the 
shrill  hostile  voice.  "  I  swore  I  never  would, 
and  I  won't !  " 

"  You'd  have  to  take  a  crowbar  to  get  under 
my  roof,"  returned  Abner,  grimly  conscious 
of  a  certain  humor  in  the  thought.  "  What's 
left  of  it  is  layin'  over  yonder  in  what  used  to 
be  the  cellar.  So  you  needn't  stand  on  cere- 
mony on  that  account.  I  ain't  got  no  house 
now,  so't  your  oath  ain't  bindin'.  Besides, 
the  Bible  says,  '  Swear  not  at  all !  " 

A  momentary  silence  ensued ;  then  Abner 
rattled  the  door  on  its  wheels.  "  Well,  what 
are  you  goin'  to  do  ?  "  he  asked,  impatiently. 
"  I  can't  keep  this  door  open  all  night,  freezin' 
everybody  to  death.  If  you  won't  come  in, 
you'll  have  to  stay  out !  "  and  again  there  was 
an  ominous  creaking  of  the  rollers. 

"  I  want  my  da'ater  !  "  insisted  Jehoiada, 
vehemently.     "  I  stan'  on  a  father's  rights." 

"  A  father  ain't  got  no  more  right  to  make 
a  fool  of  himself  than  anybody  else,"  replied 
Abner,  gravely.  "  What  kind  of  a  time  o' 
night  is  this,  with  the  snow  knee-deep,  for  a 
girl  to  be  out  o'  doors  ?  She's  all  right  here, 
with  my  women-folks,  an'  I'll  bring  her  down 
with  the  cutter  in  the  mornin'  —  that  is,  if 


160  THE    COPPERHEAD 

she  wants  to  come.  An'  now,  once  for  all, 
will  you  step  inside  or  not?" 

Esther  had  taken  up  the  lantern  and  ad- 
vanced with  it  now  to  the  open  door.  "  Come 
in,  father,"  she  said,  in  tones  which  seemed 
to  be  authoritative.  "  They've  been  very  kind 
to  me.     Come  in  !  " 

Then,  to  my  surprise,  the  lean  and  scrawny 
figure  of  the  cooper  emerged  from  the  dark- 
ness, and  stepping  high  over  the  snow,  entered 
the  barn,  Abner  sending  the  door  to  behind 
him  with  a  mighty  sweep  of  the  arm. 

Old  Hagadorn  came  in  grumbling  under  his 
breath,  and  stamping  the  snow  from  his  feet 
with  sullen  kicks.  He  bore  a  sledge-stake  in 
one  of  his  mittened  hands.  A  worsted  com- 
forter was  wrapped  around  his  neck  and  ears 
and  partially  over  his  conical-peaked  cap. 
He  rubbed  his  long  thin  nose  against  his  mit- 
ten and  blinked  sulkily  at  the  lantern  and  the 
girl  who  held  it. 

"  So  here  you  be  ! "  he  said  at  last,  in  vexed 
tones.  "  An'  me  traipsin'  around  in  the  snow 
the  best  part  of  the  night  lookin'  for  you  ! " 

"  See  here,  father,"  said  Esther,  speaking 
in  a  measured,  deliberate  way,  "  we  won't 
talk  about  that  at  all.     If  a  thousand  times 


THE    UNWELCOME  GUEST  161 

worse  things  had  happened  to  both  of  us 
than  have,  it  still  wouldn't  be  worth  mention- 
ing compared  with  what  has  befallen  these 
good  people  here.  They've  been  attacked  by 
a  mob  of  rowdies  and  loafers,  and  had  their 
house  and  home  burned  down  over  their  heads 
and  been  driven  to  take  refuge  here  in  this 
barn  of  a  winter's  night.  They've  shared 
their  shelter  with  me  and  been  kindness  it- 
self, and  now  that  you're  here,  if  you  can't 
think  of  anything  pleasant  to  say  to  them,  if 
I  were  you  I'd  say  nothing  at  all." 

This  was  plain  talk,  but  it  seemed  to  pro- 
duce a  satisfactory  effect  upon  Jehoiada.  He 
unwound  his  comforter  enough  to  liberate 
his  straggling  sandy  beard  and  took  off  his 
mittens.  After  a  moment  or  two  he  seated 
himself  in  the  chair,  with  a  murmured  "  I'm 
jest  about  tuckered  out,"  in  apology  for  the 
action.  He  did,  in  truth,  present  a  woeful 
picture  of  fatigue  and  physical  feebleness, 
now  that  we  saw  him  in  repose.  The  bones 
seemed  ready  to  start  through  the  parchment- 
like skin  on  his  gaunt  cheeks,  and  his  eyes 
glowed  with  an  unhealthy  fire,  as  he  sat, 
breathing  hard  and  staring  at  the  jumbled 
heaps  of  furniture  on  the  floor. 


162  TEE    COPPEREEAD 

Esther  had  put  the  lantern  again  on  the 
box  and  drawn  forward  a  chair  for  Abner,  but 
the  farmer  declined  it  with  a  wave  of  the 
hand  and  continued  to  stand  in  the  back- 
ground, looking  his  ancient  enemy  over  from 
head  to  foot  with  a  meditative  gaze.  Jehoiada 
grew  visibly  nervous  under  this  inspection; 
he  fidgeted  on  his  chair  and  then  fell  to 
coughing  —  a  dry,  rasping  cough  which  had 
an  evil  sound,  and  which  he  seemed  to  make 
the  worse  by  fumbling  aimlessly  at  the  button 
that  held  the  overcoat  collar  round  his  throat. 

At  last  Abner  walked  slowly  over  to  the 
shadowed  masses  of  piled-up  household  things 
and  lifted  out  one  of  the  drawers  that  had 
been  taken  from  the  framework  of  the  bureau 
and  brought  over  with  their  contents.  Ap- 
parently it  was  not  the  right  one,  for  he 
dragged  aside  a  good  many  objects  to  get  at 
another,  and  rummaged  about  in  this  for  sev- 
eral minutes.  Then  he  came  out  again  into 
the  small  segment  of  the  lantern's  radiance 
with  a  pair  of  long  thick  woolen  stockings  of 
his  own  in  his  hand. 

"You  better  pull  off  them  wet  boots  an' 
draw  these  on,"  he  said,  addressing  Hagadorn, 
but  looking  fixedly  just  over  his  head.     "  It 


THE    UNWELCOME  GUEST  163 

won't  do  that  cough  o'  yours  no  good,  settin' 
around  with  wet  feet." 

The  cooper  looked  in  a  puzzled  way  at 
the  huge  butternut-yarn  stockings  held  out 
under  his  nose,  but  he  seemed  too  much 
taken  aback  to  speak  or  to  offer  to  touch 
them. 

"  Yes,  father  !  "  said  Esther,  with  quite  an 
air  of  command.  "  You  know  what  that 
cough  means,"  and  straightway  Hagadorn 
lifted  one  of  his  feet  to  his  knee  and  started 
tugging  at  the  boot-heel  in  a  desultory  way. 
He  desisted  after  a  few  half-hearted  attempts, 
and  began  coughing  again,  this  time  more 
distressingly  than  ever. 

His  daughter  sprang  forward  to  help  him, 
but  Abner  pushed  her  aside,  put  the  stock- 
ings under  his  arm,  and  himself  undertook 
the  job.  He  did  not  bend  his  back  overmuch, 
but  hoisted  Jee's  foot  well  in  the  air  and 
pulled. 

"  Brace  your  foot  agi'n  mine  an'  hold  on 
to  the  chair ! "  he  ordered,  sharply,  for  the 
first  effect  of  his  herculean  pull  had  been  to 
nearly  drag  the  cooper  to  the  floor.  He 
went  at  it  more  gently  now,  easing  the  soaked 
leather  up  and  down  over  the  instep  until  the 


164  THE    COPPERHEAD 

boots  were  off.  He  looked  furtively  at  the 
bottoms  of  these  before  he  tossed  them  aside, 
noting,  no  doubt,  as  I  did,  how  old  and 
broken  and  run  down  at  the  heel  they  were. 
Jee  himself  peeled  off  the  drenched  stockings, 
and  they  too  were  flimsy  old  things,  darned 
and  mended  almost  out  of  their  original 
color. 

These  facts  served  only  to  deepen  my 
existing  low  opinion  of  Hagadorn,  but  they 
appeared  to  affect  Abner  Beech  differently. 
He  stood  by  and  watched  the  cooper  dry  his 
feet  and  then  draw  on  the  warm  dry  hose 
over  his  shrunken  shanks,  with  almost  a 
friendly  interest.  Then  he  shoved  along  one 
of  the  blankets  across  the  floor  to  Hagradorn's 
chair  that  he  might  wrap  his  feet  in  it. 

"  That's  it,"  he  said,  approvingly.  "  They 
ain't  no  means  o'  building  a  fire  here  right 
now,  but  as  luck  would  have  it  we'd  jest  set 
up  an  old  kitchen  stove  in  the  little  cow-barn 
to  warm  up  gruel  for  the  ca'aves  with,  an' 
the  first  thing  we'll  do'll  be  to  rig  it  up  in 
here  to  cook  breakfast  by,  an'  then  we'll  dry 
them  boots  o'  yourn  in  no  time.  You  go  an' 
pour  some  oats  into  'em  now,"  Abner  added, 
turning   to   me.     "  And   you  might  as  well 


THE   UNWELCOME  GUEST  165 

call  Hurley.  We've  got  considerable  to  do, 
an'  daylight's  breakin'." 

The  Irishman  lay  on  his  back  where  I  had 
left  him,  still  snoring  tempestuously.  As  a 
rule  he  was  a  light  sleeper,  but  this  time  I 
had  to  shake  him  again  and  again  before  he 
understood  that  it  was  morning.  I  opened 
the  side-door,  and  sure  enough,  the  day  had 
begun.  The  clouds  had  cleared  away.  The 
sky  was  still  ashen  gray  overhead,  but  the 
light  from  the  horizon,  added  to  the  white- 
ness of  the  unaccustomed  snow,  rendered  it 
quite  easy  to  see  one's  way  about  inside.  I 
went  to.  the  oat-bin. 

Hurley,  sitting  up  and  rubbing  his  eyes, 
regarded  me  and  my  task  with  curiosity. 
"  An'  is  it  a  stovepipe  for  a  measure  ye 
have  ?  "  he  asked. 

"  No ;  it's  one  of  Jee  Hagadorn's  boots,"  I 
replied.  "  I'm  filling  'em  so't  they'll  swell 
when  they're  dryin'." 

He  slid  down  off  the  hay  as  if  someone 
had  pushed  him.  "What's  that  ye  say? 
Haggydorh?  Ould  Haggydorn?"  he  de- 
manded. 

I  nodded  assent.  "Yes,  he's  inside  with 
Abner,"    I    explained.     "  An'    he's    got   on 


166  THE    COPPERHEAD 

Abner's  stockin's,  an'  it  looks  like  he's  goin' 
to  stay  to  breakfast." 

Hurley  opened  his  mouth  in  sheer  surprise 
and  gazed  at  me  with  hanging  jaw  and  round 
eyes. 

"  'Tis  the  fever  that's  on  ye,"  he  said,  at 
last.     "  Ye're  wandherin'  in  yer  mind !  " 

"  You  just  go  in  and  see  for  yourself,"  I 
replied,  and  Hurley  promptly  took  me  at  my 
word. 

He  came  back  presently,  turning  the  corner 
of  the  stanchions  in  a  depressed  and  rambling 
way,  quite  at  variance  with  his  accustomed 
swinging  gait.  He  hung  his  head,  too,  and 
shook  it  over  and  over  again  perplexedly. 

"  Abner  'n'  me'll  be  bringin'  in  the  stove," 
he  said.  "  'Tis  not  fit  for  you  to  go  out  wid 
that  sickness  on  ye." 

"  Well,  anyway,"  I  retorted,  "  you  see  I 
wasn't  wanderin'  much  in  my  mind." 

Hurley  shook  his  head  again.  "  Well, 
then,"  he  began,  lapsing  into  deep  brogue 
and  speaking  rapidly,  "  I've  meself  seen  the 
woman  wid  the  head  of  a  horse  on  her  in  the 
lake  forninst  the  Three  Castles,  an'  me  sister's 
first  man,  sure  he  broke  down  the  ditch 
round-about  the  Danes'  fort  on  Dunkelly,  an' 


THE   UNWELCOME  GUEST  167 

a  foine  grand  young  man,  small  for  his 
strength  an'  wid  a  red  cap  on  his  head,  flew 
out  an'  wint  up  in  the  sky,  an'  whin  he  re- 
lated it  up  comes  Father  Forrest  to  him  in 
the  potaties,  an'  says  he,  '  I  do  be  suprised 
wid  you,  O'Driscoll,  for  to  be  relatin'  such 
loies.'  '  I'll  take  me  Bible  oat'  on  'em ! ' 
says  he.  '  'Tis  your  imagination  ! '  says  the 
priest.  '  No  imagination  at  all!'  says  O'Dris- 
coll ;  '  sure,  I  saw  it  wid  dese  two  eyes,  as 
plain  as  I'm  lookin'  at  your  riverence,  an'  a 
far  grander  sight  it  was  too  ! '  An'  me  own 
mother,  faith,  manny's  the  toime  I've  seen 
her  makin'  up  dhrops  for  the  yellow  sickliest 
wid  woodlice,  an'  sayin'  Hail  Marys  over  'em, 
an'  thim  same  'ud  cure  annything  from  sore 
teeth  to  a  wooden  leg  for  moiles  round.  But, 
saints  help  me !  I  never  seen  the  loikes  o' 
this  !  Haggydorn  is  it  ?  Ould  Haggydorn  ! 
Huh!" 

Then  the  Irishman,  still  with  a  dejected 
air,  started  off  across  the  yard  through  the 
snow  to  the  cow-barns,  mumbling  to  himself 
as  he  went. 

I  had  heard  Abner's  heavy  tread  coming 
along  the  stanchions  toward  me,  but  now  all 
at  once  it  stopped.     The  farmer's  wife  had  fol- 


168  THE    COPPERHEAD 

lowed  him  into  the  passage,  and  he  had  halted 
to  speak  with  her. 

"  They  ain't  no  two  ways  about  it,  mother," 
he  expostulated.  "  We  jest  got  to  put  the 
best  face  on  it  we  kin,  an'  act  civil,  an'  pass 
the  time  o'  day  as  if  nothing'd  ever  happened 
atween  us.  He'll  be  goin'  the  first  thing 
after  breakfast." 

"  Oh  !  I  ain't  agoin'  to  sass  him,  or  say  any- 
thing uncivil,"  M'rye  broke  in,  reassuringly. 
"  What  I  mean  is,  I  dont  want  to  come  into 
the  for'ard  end  of  the  barn  at  all.  They  ain't 
no  need  of  it.  I  kin  cook  the  breakfast  in 
back,  and  Janey  kin  fetch  it  for'ard  for  yeh, 
an'  nobody  need  say  anythin',  or  be  any  the 
wiser." 

"  Yes,  I  know,"  argued  Abner,  "  but  there's 
the  looks  o'  the  thing.  J  say,  if  you're  goin' 
to  do  a  thing,  why,  do  it  right  up  to  the  han- 
dle, or  else  don't  do  it  at  all.  An'  then 
there's  the  girl  to  consider,  and  her  feelin's." 

"  Dunno't  her  feelin's  are  such  a  pesky 
sight  more  importance  than  other  folkses," 
remarked  M'rye,  callously. 

This  unaccustomed  recalcitrancy  seemed  to 
take  Abner  aback.  He  moved  a  few  steps 
forward,  so  that  he  became  visible  from  where 


THE   UNWELCOME  GUEST  169 

I  stood,  then  halted  again  and  turned,  his 
shoulders  rounded,  his  hands  clasped  behind 
his  back.  I  could  see  him  regarding  M'rye 
from  under  his  broad  hat-brim  with  a  gaze  at 
once  dubious  and  severe. 

"  I  ain't  much  in  the  habit  o'  hearin'  you 
talk  this  way  to  me,  mother,"  he  said  at  last, 
with  grave  depth  of  tones  and  significant 
deliberation. 

"Well,  I  can't  help  it,  Abner!"  rejoined 
M'rye,  bursting  forth  in  vehement  utterance, 
all  the  more  excited  from  the  necessity  she 
felt  of  keeping  it  out  of  hearing  of  the  unwel- 
come guest.  "  I  don't  want  to  do  anything 
to  aggravate  you,  or  go  contrary  to  your  no- 
tions, but  with  even  the  willin'est  pack-horse 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  pilin'  it  on  too  thick. 
I  can  stan'  bein'  burnt  out  o'  house  'n'  home, 
an'  seein'  pretty  nigh  every  rag  an'  stick  I 
had  in  the  world  go  kitin'  up  the  chimney, 
an'  campin'  out  here  in  a  barn  —  My  Glory, 
yes !  —  an'  as  much  more  on  top  o'  that,  but, 
I  tell  you  flat-footed,  I  can't  stomach  Jee 
Hagadorn,  an'  I  won't!" 

Abner  continued  to  contemplate  the  re- 
volted M'rye  with  displeased  amazement 
written   all  over  his  face.     Once  or  twice  I 


170  THE    COPPERHEAD 

thought  he  was  going  to  speak,  but  nothing 
came  of  it.  He  only  looked  and  looked,  as  if 
he  had  the  greatest  difficulty  in  crediting 
what  he  saw. 

Finally,  with  a  deep-chested  sigh,  he  turned 
again.  "  I  s'pose  this  is  still  more  or  less  of  a 
free  country,"  he  said.  "If  you're  sot  on  it,  I 
can't  hender  you,"  and  he  began  walking 
once  more  toward  me. 

M'rye  followed  him  out  and  put  a  hand  on 
his  arm.  "  Don't  go  off  like  that,  Abner  ! " 
she  adjured  him.  "  You  know  there  ain't 
nothin'  in  this  whole  wide  world  I  wouldn't 
do  to  please  you  —  if  I  could !  But  this  thing 
jest  goes  ag'in'  nry  grain.  It's  the  way  folks 
are  made.  It's  your  nater  to  be  forgivin'  an' 
do  good  to  them  that  despitefully  use  you." 

"  No,  it  ain't !  "  declared  Abner,  vigorously. 
"  No,  sirree  !  '  Hold  fast '  is  my  nater.  I 
stan'  out  ag'in'  my  enemies  till  the  last  cow 
comes  home.  But  when  they  come  wadin'  in 
through  the  snow,  with  their  feet  soppin'  wet, 
an'  coughin'  fit  to  turn  themselves  inside  out, 
an'  their  daughter  is  there,  an'  you've  sort  o' 
made  it  up  with  her,  an'  we're  all  campin'  out 
in  a  barn,  don't  you  see  —  " 

"  No,  I  can't  see  it,"  replied  M'rye,  regretful 


THE   UNWELCOME  GUEST  171 

but  firm.  "  They  always  said  we  Rams  wells 
had  Injun  blood  in  us  somewhere.  An'  when 
I  get  an  Injun  streak  on  me,  right  down  in 
the  marrow  o'  my  bones,  why,  you  musn't 
blame  me  —  or  feel  hard  if  —  if  I  —  " 

"No-o,"  said  Abner,  with  reluctant  convic- 
tion, "  I  s'pose  not.  I  dare  say  you're  actin' 
accordin'  to  your  lights.  An'  besides,  he'll 
be  goin'  the  first  thing  after  breakfast." 

"An'  you  ain't  mad,  Abner?"  pleaded 
M'rye,  almost  tremulously,  as  if  frightened  at 
the  dimensions  of  the  victory  she  had  won. 

"  Why,  bless  your  heart,  no,"  answered  the 
farmer,  with  a  glaring  simulation  of  easy- 
mindedness.    "  No  —  that's  all  right,  mother  !  " 

Then  with  long  heavy-footed  strides  the 
farmer  marched  past  me  and  out  into  the 
cow-yard. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

THE  BREAKFAST 

If  there  was  ever  a  more  curious  meal  in 
Dearborn  County  than  that  first  breakfast  of 
ours  in  the  barn,  I  never  heard  of  it. 

The  big  table  was  among  the  things  saved 
from  the  living-room,  and  Esther  spread  it 
again  with  the  cloth  which  had  been  in  use 
on  the  previous  evening.  There  was  the 
stain  of  the  tea  which  the  Underwood  girl 
had  spilled  in  the  exitement  of  the  supper's 
rough  interruption  ;  there  were  other  marks 
of  calamit}^  upon  it  as  well  —  the  smudge  of 
cinders,  for  one  thing,  and  a  general  diffused 
effect  of  smokiness.  But  it  was  the  only 
table-cloth  we  had.  The  dishes,  too,  were  a 
queer  lot,  representing  two  or  three  sets  of 
widely  differing  patterns  and  value,  other 
portions  of  which  we  should  never  see  again. 

When  it  was  announced  that  breakfast  was 
ready,  Abner  took  his  accustomed  arm-chair 
at  the  head  of  the  table.  He  only  half 
172 


THE  BREAKFAST  173 

turned  bis  head  toward  Hagadorn  and  said  in 
formal  tones,  over  his  shoulder,  "  Won't  you 
draw  up  and  have  some  breakfast?" 

Jee  was  still  sitting  where  he  had  planted 
himself  two  hours  or  so  before.  He  still  wore 
his  round  cap,  with  the  tabs  tied  down 
over  his  ears.  In  addition  to  his  overcoat, 
someone  —  probably  his  daughter  —  had 
wrapped  a  shawl  about  his  thin  shoulders. 
The  boots  had  not  come  in,  as  yet,  from  the 
stove,  and  the  blanket  was  drawn  up  over 
his  stockinged  feet  to  the  knees.  From  time 
to  time  his  lips  moved,  as  if  he  were  reciting 
scripture  texts  to  himself,  but  so  far  as  I 
knew,  he  had  said  nothing  to  anyone.  His 
cough  seemed  rather  worse  than  better. 

"  Yes,  come,  father !  "  Esther  added  to  the 
farmer's  invitation,  and  drew  a  chair  back  for 
him  two  plates  away  from  Abner.  Thus  ad- 
jured he  rose  and  hobbled  stiffly  over  to  the 
place  indicated,  bringing  his  foot-blanket  with 
him.  Esther  stooped  to  arrange  this  for  him 
and  then  seated  herself  next  the  host. 

"  You  see,  I'm  going  to  sit  beside  you,  Mr. 
Beech,"  she  said,  with  a  wan  little  smile. 

"  Glad  to  have  you,"  remarked  Abner, 
gravely. 


174  THE    COPPERHEAD 

The  Underwood  girl  brought  in  a  first 
plate  of  buckwheat  cakes,  set  it  down  in 
front  of  Abner,  and  took  her  seat  opposite 
Hagadorn  and  next  to  me.  There  remained 
three  vacant  places,  down  at  the  foot  of  the 
table,  and  though  we  all  began  eating  with- 
out comment,  everybody  continually  encoun- 
tered some  other's  glance  straying  significantly 
toward  these  empty  seats.  Janey  Wilcox, 
very  straight  and  with  an  uppish  air,  came 
in  with  another  plate  of  cakes  and  marched 
out  again  in  tell-tale  silence. 

"  Hurley !  Come  along  in  here  an'  git 
your  breakfast ! " 

The  farmer  fairly  roared  out  this  command, 
then  added  in  a  lower,  apologetic  tone :  "  I 
'spec'  the  women-folks  've  got  their  hands 
full  with  that  broken-down  old  stove." 

We  all  looked  toward  the  point,  half-way 
down  the  central  barn-floor,  where  the  demo- 
crat wagon,  drawn  crosswise,  served  to  divide 
our  improvised  living-room  and  kitchen. 
Through  the  wheels,  and  under  its  uplifted 
pole,  we  could  vaguely  discern  two  petti- 
coated  figures  at  the  extreme  other  end, 
moving  about  the  stove,  the  pipe  of  which  was 
carried  up  and  out  through  a  little  window 


THE  BREAKFAST  175 

above  the  door.  Then  Hurley  appeared,  duck- 
ing his  head  under  the  wagon-pole. 

"I'm  aitin'  out  here,  convanient  to  the 
stove,"  he  shouted  from  this  dividing-line. 

"  No,  come  and  take  your  proper  place  ! " 
bawled  back  the  farmer,  and  Hurley  had 
nothing  to  do  but  obey.  He  advanced  with 
obvious  reluctance,  and  halted  at  the  foot  of 
the  table,  eying  with  awkward  indecision 
the  three  vacant  chairs.  One  was  M'rye's; 
the  others  would  place  him  either  next  to 
the  hated  cooper  or  diagonally  opposite, 
where  he  must  look  at  him  all  the  while. 

"Sure,  I'm  better  out  there  !  "  he  ventured 
to  insist,  in  a  wheedling  tone;  but  Abner 
thundered  forth  an  angry  "No,  sir!"  and 
the  Irishman  sank  abruptly  into  the  seat 
beside  Hagadorn.  From  this  place  he  eyed 
the  Underwood  girl  with  a  glare  of  con- 
temptuous disapproval.  I  learned  afterward 
that  M'rye  and  Janey  Wilcox  regarded  her 
desertion  of  them  as  the  meanest  episode  of 
the  whole  miserable  morning,  and  beguiled 
their  labors  over  the  stove  by  recounting  to 
each  other  all  the  low-down  qualities  illus- 
trated by  the  general  history  of  her  "  sap- 
headed  tribe." 


176  THE    COPPERHEAD 

Meanwhile  conversation  languished. 

With  the  third  or  fourth  instalment  of 
cakes,  Janey  Wilcox  had  halted  long  enough 
to  deliver  herself  of  a  few  remarks,  sternly 
limited  to  the  necessities  of  the  occasion. 
"  M'rye  says,"  she  declaimed,  coldly,  looking 
the  while  with  great  fixedness  at  the  hay- 
wall,  "if  the  cakes  are  sour  she  can't  help 
it.  We  saved  what  was  left  over  of  the  bat- 
ter, but  the  Graham  flour  and  the  sody  are 
both  burnt  up,"  and  with  that  stalked  out 
again. 

Not  even  politeness  could  excuse  the  pre- 
tence on  anyone's  part  that  the  cakes  were 
not  sour,  but  Abner  seized  upon  the  general 
subject  as  an  opening  for  talk. 

"  'Member  when  I  was  a  little  shaver,"  he 
remarked,  with  an  effort  at  amiability,  "  my 
sisters  kicked  about  havin'  to  bake  the  cakes, 
on  account  of  the  hot  stove  makin'  their  faces 
red  an'  spoilin'  their  complexions,  an'  they 
wanted  specially  to  go  to  some  fandango  or 
other,  an'  look  their  pootiest,  an'  so  father 
sent  us  boys  out  into  the  kitchen  to  bake  'em 
instid.  Old  Lorenzo  Dow,  the  Methodist 
preacher,  was  stoppin'  over-night  at  our 
house,  an'  mother  was  jest  beside  herself  to 


THE  BREAKFAST  177 

have  everything  go  off  ship-shape  —  an'  then 
them  cakes  begun  comin'  in.  Fust  my 
brother  William,  he  baked  one  the  shape  of  a 
horse,  an'  then  Josh,  he  made  one  like  a  jack- 
ass with  ears  as  long  as  the  griddle  would 
allow  of  lengthwise,  and  I'd  got  jest  com- 
fortably started  in  on  one  that  I  begun  as  a 
pig,  an'  then  was  going  to  alter  into  a  ship 
with  sails  up,  when  father,  he  come  out  with 
a  hold-back  strap,  an'  —  well  —  mine  never 
got  finished  to  this  day.  Mother,  she  was 
mortified  most  to  death,  but  old  Dow,  he  jest 
lay  back  and  laughed  —  laughed  till  you'd 
thought  he'd  split  himself." 

"It  was  from  Lorenzo  Dow's  lips  that  I 
had  my  first  awakening  call  unto  righteous- 
ness," said  Jee  Hagadorn,  speaking  with 
solemn  unction  in  high,  quavering  tones. 

The  fact  that  he  should  have  spoken  at  all 
was  enough  to  take  even  the  sourness  out  of 
M'rye's  cakes. 

Abner  took  up  the  ball  with  solicitous 
promptitude.  "  A  very  great  man,  Lorenzo 
Dow  was  —  in  his  way,"  he  remarked. 

"By  grace  he  was  spared  the  shame  and 
humiliation,"  said  Hagadorn,  lifting  his  voice 
as  he  went  on  —  "  the  humiliation  of  living  to 


178  THE    COPPERHEAD 

see  one  whole  branch  of  the  Church  separate 
itself  from  the  rest  —  withdraw  and  call  it- 
self the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  South, 
in  defence  of  human  slavery !  " 

Esther,  red-faced  with  embarrassment,  in- 
tervened peremptorily.  "  How  can  you, 
father !  "  she  broke  in.  "  For  all  you  know 
he  might  have  been  red-hot  on  that  side  him- 
self !  In  fact,  I  dare  say  he  would  have  been. 
How  on  earth  can  you  know  to  the  contrary, 
anyway  ?  " 

Jee  was  all  excitement  on  the  instant,  at 
the  promise  of  an  argument.  His  eyes 
flashed ;  he  half  rose  from  his  seat  and  opened 
his  mouth  to  reply.  So  much  had  he  to  say, 
indeed,  that  the  words  stumbled  over  one 
another  on  his  tongue,  and  produced  nothing, 
but  an  incoherent  stammering  sound,  which 
all  at  once  was  supplanted  by  a  violent  fit  of 
coughing.  So  terrible  were  the  paroxysms 
of  this  seizure  that  when  they  had  at  last 
spent  their  fury  the  poor  man  was  trembling 
like  a  leaf  and  toppled  in  his  chair  as  if  about 
to  swoon.  Esther  had  hovered  about  over 
him  from  the  outset  of  the  fit,  and  now  looked 
up  appealingly  to  Abner.  The  farmer  rose, 
walked   down   the    table-side,   and   gathered 


THE  BREAKFAST  179 

Jee's  fragile  form  up  under  one  big  engird- 
ling arm.  Then,  as  the  girl  hastily  dragged 
forth  the  tick  and  blankets  again  and  spread 
them  into  the  rough  semblance  of  a  bed, 
Abner  half  led,  half  carried  the  cooper 
over  and  gently  laid  him  down  thereon. 
Together  they  fixed  up  some  sort  of  pillow 
for  him  with  hay  under  the  blanket,  and 
piled  him  snugly  over  with  quilts  and  my 
comfortable. 

"There  —  you'll  be  better  layin'  down," 
said  Abner,  soothingly.  Hagadorn  closed 
his  eyes  wearily  and  made  no  answer.  They 
left  him  after  a  minute  or  two  and  returned 
to  the  table. 

The  rest  of  the  breakfast  was  finished  al- 
most wholly  in  silence.  Every  once  in  a 
while  Abner  and  Esther  would  exchange 
looks,  his  gravely  kind,  hers  gratefully  con- 
tented, and  these  seemed  really  to  render 
speech  needless.  For  my  own  part,  I  foresaw 
with  some  degree  of  depression  that  there 
would  soon  be  no  chance  whatever  of  my 
securing  attention  in  the  rSle  of  an  invalid, 
at  least  in  this  part  of  the  barn. 

Perhaps,  however,  they  might  welcome  me 
in  the  kitchen  part,  as  a  sort  of  home-product 


180  THE    COPPERHEAD 

rival  to  the  sick  cooper.  I  rose  and  walked 
languidly  out  into  M'rye's  domain.  But  the 
two  women  were  occupied  with  a  furious 
scrubbing  of  rescued  pans  for  the  morning's 
milk,  and  they  allowed  me  to  sit  feebly  down 
on  the  wood-box  behind  the  stove  without  so 
much  as  a  glance  of  sympathy. 

By  and  by  we  heard  one  of  the  great  front 
doors  rolled  back  on  its  shrieking  wheels  and 
then  shut  to  again.  Someone  had  entered, 
and  in  a  moment  there  came  some  strange, 
inarticulate  sounds  of  voices  which  showed 
that  the  arrival  had  created  a  commotion. 
M'rye  lifted  her  head,  and  I  shall  never  for- 
get the  wild,  expectant  flashing  of  her  black 
eyes  in  that  moment  of  suspense. 

"  Come  in  here,  mother !  "  we  heard  Abner's 
deep  voice  call  out  from  beyond  the  democrat 
wagon.  "  Here's  somebody  wants  to  see 
you!" 

M'rye  swiftly  wiped  her  hands  on  her 
apron  and  glided  rather  than  walked  toward 
the  forward  end  of  the  barn.  Janey  Wilcox 
and  I  followed  close  upon  her  heels,  dodging 
together  under  the  wagon-pole,  and  emerging, 
breathless  and  wild  with  curiosity,  on  the 
fringe  of  an  excited  group. 


THE  BREAKFAST  181 

In  the  centre  of  this  group,  standing  with 
a  satisfied  smile  on  his  face,  his  general  ap- 
pearance considerably  the  worse  for  wear, 
but  in  demeanor,  to  quote  M'rye's  subse- 
quent phrase,  "as  cool  as  Cuffy,"  was  Ni 
Hagadorn. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

FINIS 

"  He's  all  right ;  you  can  look  for  him 
here  right  along  now,  any  day;  he  ivas  hurt 
a  leetle,  but  he's  as  peart  an'  chipper  now  as 
a  blue-jay  on  a  hick'ry  limb ;  yes,  he's  a-comin' 
right  smack  home  !  " 

This  was  the  gist  of  the  assurances  which 
Ni  vouchsafed  to  the  first  rush  of  eager  ques- 
tions—  to  his  sister,  and  JM'rye,  and  Janey 
Wilcox. 

Abner  had  held  a  little  aloof,  to  give  the 
weaker  sex  a  chance.  Now  he  reasserted 
himself  once  more :  "  Stan'  back,  now,  and 
give  the  young  man  breathin'  room.  Janey, 
hand  a  chair  for'ard  —  that's  it.  Now  set  ye 
down,  Ni,  an'  take  your  own  time,  an'  tell  us 
all  about  it.     So  you  reely  found  him,  eh  ?  " 

"  Pshaw !  there  ain't  anything  to  that," 
expostulated  Ni,  seating  himself  with  non- 
chalance, and  tilting  back  his  chair.  "  That 
was  easy  as  rollin'  off  a  log.     But  what's  the 

182 


finis  183 

matter  here  ?  That's  what  knocks  me.  We 
—  that  is  to  say,  I  —  come  up  on  a  freight 
train  to  a  ways  beyond  Juno  Junction,  an' 
got  the  conductor  to  slow  up  and  let  me  drop 
off,  an'  footed  it  over  the  hill.  It  was  jest 
about  broad  daylight  when  I  turned  the 
divide.  Then  I  began  lookin'  for  your  house, 
an'  I'm  lookin'  for  it  still.  There's  a  hole  out 
there,  full  o'  snow  an'  smoke,  but  nary  a 
house.     How'd  it  happen  ?  " 

"  'Lection  bonfire  —  high  wind  —  wood- 
shed must  'a'  caught,"  replied  Abner,  senten- 
tiously.    "  So  you  reely  got  down  South,  eh  ?  " 

"  An'  Siss  here,  too,"  commented  Ni,  with 
provoking  disregard  for  the  farmer's  sugges- 
tions ;  "  a  reg'lar  family  party.     An',  hello  !  " 

His  roving  eye  had  fallen  upon  the  recum- 
bent form  on  the  made-up  bed,  under  the 
muffling  blankets,  and  he  lifted  his  sandy 
wisps  of  eyebrows  in  inquiry. 

"  Sh !  It's  father,"  explained  Esther.  "He 
isn't  feeling  very  well.     I  think  he's  asleep." 

The  boy's  freckled,  whimsical  face  melted 
upon  reflection  into  a  distinct  grin.  "  Why," 
he  said,  "you've  been  havin'  a  reg'lar  old 
love-feast  up  here.  I  guess  it  was  that  that 
set  the  house  on  fire  !     An'  speakin'  o'  feasts, 


184  THE    COPPERHEAD 

if  you've  got  a  mouthful  o'  somethin'  to  eat 
handy  —  " 

The  women  were  off  like  a  shot  to  the 
impromptu  larder  at  the  far  end  of  the  barn. 

"  Well,  thin,"  put  in  Hurley,  taking  advan- 
tage of  their  absence,  "  an'  had  ye  the  luck  to 
see  anny  rale  fightin'  ?  " 

"Never  mind  that,"  said  Abner;  "when 
he  gits  around  to  it  he'll  tell  us  everything. 
But,  fust  of  all  —  why,  he  knows  what  I  want 
to  hear  about." 

"Why,  the  last  time  I  talked  with  you, 
Abner  — "  Ni  began,  squinting  up  one  of 
his  eyes  and  giving  a  quaint  drawl  to  his 
words. 

"  That's  a  good  while  ago,"  said  the  farmer, 
quietly. 

"Things  have  took  a  change,  eh?"  in- 
quired Ni. 

"  That's  neither  here  nor  there,"  replied 
Abner,  somewhat  testily.  "  You  oughtn't  to 
need  so  dummed  much  explainin'.  I've  told 
you  what  I  want  specially  to  hear.  An'  that's 
what  we  all  want  to  hear." 

When  the  women  had  returned,  and  Ni, 
with  much  deliberation,  had  filled  both  hands 
with  selected  eatables,  the  recital  at  last  got 


FINIS  185 

under  way.  Its  progress  was  blocked  from 
time  to  time  by  sheer  force  of  tantalizing 
perversity  on  the  part  of  the  narrator,  and  it 
suffered  steadily  from  the  incidental  hitches 
of  mastication ;  but  such  as  it  was  we 
listened  to  it  with  all  our  ears,  sitting  or 
standing  about,  and  keeping  our  eyes  intently 
upon  the  freckled  young  hero. 

"It  wasn't  so  much  of  a  job  to  git  down 
there  as  I'd  figured  on,"  Ni  said,  between 
mouthfuls.  "  I  got  along  on  freight  trains 
—  once  worked  my  way  a  while  on  a  hand- 
car—  as  far  as  Albany,  an'  on  down  to 
New  York  on  a  river-boat,  cheap,  an'  then, 
after  foolin'  round  a  few  days,  I  hitched  up 
with  the  Sanitary  Commission  folks,  an'  got 
them  to  let  me  sail  on  one  o'  their  boats  round 
to  'Napolis.  I  thought  I  was  goin'  to  die 
most  o'  the  voyage,  but  I  didn't,  you  see,  an' 
when  I  struck  'Napolis  I  hung  around  Camp 
Parole  there  quite  a  spell,  talkin'  with  fellers 
that'd  bin  pris'ners  down  in  Richmond  an'  got 
exchanged  an'  sent  North.  They  said  there 
was  a  whole  slew  of  our  fellers  down  there 
still  that'd  been  brought  in  after  Antietam. 
They  didn't  know  none  o'  their  names,  but 
they  said  they'd  all  be  sent  North  in  time,  in 


186  THE    COPPERHEAD 

exchange  for  Johnny  Rebs  that  we'd  cap- 
tured.    An'  so  I  waited  round  —  " 

"  You  might  have  written  !  "  interrupted 
Esther,  reproachfully. 

"  What'd  bin  the  good  o'  writin'  ?  I 
hadn't  anything  to  tell.  Besides  writin'  let- 
ters is  for  girls.  Well,  one  day  a  man  come 
up  from  Libby  —  that's  the  prison  at  Rich- 
mond—  an'  he  said  there  ivas  a  tall  feller 
there  from  York  State,  a  farmer,  an'  he  died. 
He  thought  the  name  was  Birch,  but  it  might 
'a'  been  Beech  —  or  Body-Maple,  for  that 
matter.  I  s'pose  you'd  like  to  had  me  write 
that  home ! " 

"  No  —  oh,  no  !  "  murmured  Esther,  speak- 
ing the  sense  of  all  the  company. 

"  Well,  then  I  waited  some  more,  an'  kep' 
on  waitin',  an'  then  waited  ag'in,  until  bimeby, 
one  fine  day,  along  comes  Mr.  Blue-jay  him- 
self. There  he  was,  stan'in'  up  on  the  paddle- 
box  with  a  face  on  him  as  long  as  your  arm, 
an'  I  sung  out,  '  Way  there,  Agrippa  Hill ! ' 
an'  he  come  mighty  nigh  fallin'  head  over 
heels  into  the  water.  So  then  he  come  off, 
an'  we  shook  han's,  an'  went  up  to  the  com- 
missioners to  see  about  his  exchange,  an'  — 
an'  as  soon's  that's  fixed,  an'  the  papers  drawn 


FINIS  187 

up  all  correct,  Avhy,  he'll  come  home.  An' 
that's  all  there  is  to  it." 

"  And  even  then  you  never  wrote  !  "  said 
Esther,  plaintively. 

"  Hold  on  a  minute,"  put  in  Abner.  "  You 
say  he's  comin'  home.  That  wouldn't  be 
unless  he  was  disabled.  They'd  keep  him  to 
fight  ag'in,  till  his  time  was  up.  Come,  now, 
tell  the  truth  —  he's  be'n  hurt  bad  !  " 

Ni  shook  his  unkempt  red  head.  "No, 
no,"  he  said.  "  This  is  how  it  was.  Fust  he 
was  fightin'  in  a  cornfield,  an'  him  an'  Bi 
Truax,  they  got  chased  out,  an'  lost  their 
regiment,  an'  got  in  with  some  other  fellers, 
and  then  they  all  waded  a  creek  breast-high, 
an'  had  to  run  up  a  long  stretch  o'  slopin' 
ploughed  ground  to  capture  a  battery  they 
was  on  top  o'  the  knoll.  But  they  didn't  see 
a  regiment  of  sharp-shooters  layin'  hidden 
behind  a  rail  fence,  an'  these  fellers  riz  up 
all  to  once  an'  give  it  to  'em  straight,  an' 
they  wilted  right  there,  an'  laid  down,  an' 
there  they  was  after  dusk  when  the  rebs 
come  out  an'  started  lookin'  round  for  guns 
an'  blankets  an'  prisoners.  Most  of  'em  was 
dead,  or  badly  hurt,  but  they  was  a  few  who'd 
simply  lain  there  in  the  hollow  because  it'd 


188  THE    COPPERHEAD 

have  bin  death  to  git  up.  An'  Jen0  was  one 
o'  them.'1'' 

"  You  said  yourself  't  he  had  been  hurt  — 
some,"  interposed  M'rye,  with  snapping  eyes. 

"  Jest  a  scratch  on  his  arm,"  declared  Ni. 
"Well,  then  they  marched  the  well  ones 
back  to  the  rear  of  the  reb  line,  an'  there 
they  jest  skinned  'em  of  everything  they  had 
—  watch  an'  jack-knife  an'  wallet  an'  every- 
thing—  an'  put  'em  to  sleep  on  the  bare 
ground.  Next  day  they  started  'em  out  on 
the  march  toward  Richmond,  an'  after  four 
or  five  days  o'  that,  they  got  to  a  railroad, 
and  there  was  cattle  cars  for  'em  to  ride 
the  rest  o'  the  way  in.  An'  that's  how  it 
was." 

"  No,"  said  Abner,  sternly  ;  "  you  haven't 
told  us.     How  badly  is  he  hurt  ?  " 

"  Well,"  replied  Ni,  "  it  was  only  a  scratch, 
as  I  said,  but  it  got  worse  on  that  march,  an' 
I  s'pose  it  wasn't  tended  to  anyways  de- 
cently, an'  so  —  an'  so  —  " 

M'rye  had  sprung  to  her  feet  and  stood 
now  drawn  up  to  her  full  height,  with  her 
sharp  nose  in  air  as  if  upon  some  strange 
scent,  and  her  eyes  fairly  glowing  in  eager 
excitement.     All  at  once  she  made  a  bound 


FINIS  189 

past  us  and  ran  to  the  doors,  furiously  dig- 
ging her  fingers  in  the  crevice  between  them, 
then,  with  a  superb  sweep  of  the  shoulders, 
sending  them  both  rattling  back  on  their 
wheels  with  a  bang. 

"  I  knew  it !  "  she  screamed  in  triumph. 

We  who  looked  out  beheld  M'rye's  black 
hair  and  brown  calico  dress  suddenly  suffer 
a  partial  eclipse  of  pale  blue,  which  for  the 
moment  seemed  in  some  way  a  part  of  the 
bright  winter  sky  beyond.  Then  we  saw 
that  it  was  a  soldier  who  had  his  arm  about 
M'rye,  and  his  cap  bent  down  tenderly  over 
the  head  she  had  laid  on  his  shoulder. 

Our  Jeff  had  come  home. 

A  general  instinct  rooted  us  to  our  places 
and  kept  us  silent,  the  while  mother  and  son 
stood  there  in  the  broad  open  doorway. 

Then  the  two  advanced  toward  us,  M'rye 
breathing  hard,  and  with  tears  and  smiles 
struggling  together  on  her  face  under  the 
shadow  of  a  wrathful  frown.  We  noted 
nothing  of  Jeff's  appearance  save  that  he 
had  grown  a  big  yellow  beard,  and  seemed 
to  be  smiling.  It  was  the  mother's  dis- 
traught countenance  at  which  we  looked 
instead. 


190  THE    COPPERHEAD 

She  halted  in  front  of  Abner,  and  lifted 
the  blue  cape  from  Jeff's  left  shoulder,  with 
an  abrupt  gesture. 

"  Look  there  !  "  she  said,  hoarsely.  "  See 
what  they've  done  to  my  boy  !  " 

We  saw  now  that  the  left  sleeve  of  Jeff's 
army-overcoat  was  empty  and  hung  pinned 
against  his  breast.  On  the  instant  we  were 
all  swarming  about  him,  shaking  the  hand 
that  remained  to  him  and  striving  against 
one  another  in  a  babel  of  questions,  com- 
ments, and  expressions  of  sympathy  with  his 
loss,  satisfaction  at  his  return.  It  seemed 
the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world  that  he 
should  kiss  Esther  Hagadorn,  and  that  Janey 
Wilcox  should  reach  up  on  tiptoes  and  kiss 
him.  When  the  Underwood  girl  would  have 
done  the  same,  however,  M'rye  brusquely 
shouldered  her  aside. 

So  beside  ourselves  with  excitement  were 
we  all,  each  in  turn  seeking  to  get  in  a  word 
edgewise,  that  no  one  noticed  the  approach 
and  entrance  of  a  stranger,  who  paused  just 
over  the  threshold  of  the  barn  and  coughed 
in  a  loud  perfunctory  way  to  attract  our 
attention.  I  had  to  nudge  Abner  twice 
before   he    turned   from  where  he  stood   at 


FINIS  191 

Jeff's  side,  with   his    hand  on   the  luckless 
shoulder,  and  surveyed  the  new-comer. 

The  sun  was  shining  so  brightly  on  the 
snow  outside,  that  it  was  not  for  the  moment 
easy  to  make  out  the  identity  of  this  shad- 
owed figure.  Abner  took  a  forward  step  or 
two  before  he  recognized  his  visitor.  It  was 
Squire  Avery,  the  rich  man  of  the  Corners, 
and  justice  of  the  peace,  who  had  once  even 
run  for  Congress. 

"How  d'  do?"  said  Abner,  shading  his 
eyes  with  a  massive  hand.  "  Won't  you  step 
in?" 

The  Squire  moved  forward  a  little  and 
held  forth  his  hand,  which  the  farmer  took 
and  shook  doubtfully.  We  others  were  as 
silent  now  as  the  grave,  feeling  this  visit  to 
be  even  stranger  than  all  that  had  gone 
before. 

"I  drove  up  right  after  breakfast,  Mr. 
Beech,"  said  the  Squire,  making  his  accus- 
tomed slow  delivery  a  trifle  more  pompous 
and  circumspect  than  usual,  "to  express  to 
you  the  feeling  of  such  neighbors  as  I  have, 
in  this  limited  space  of  time,  being  able  to 
foregather  with.  I  believe,  sir,  that  I  may 
speak  for  them  all  when  I  say  that  we  regret, 


192  THE    COPPERHEAD 

deplore,  and  contemplate  with  indignation 
the  outrage  and  injury  to  which  certain 
thoughtless  elements  of  the  community  last 
night,  sir,  subjected  you  and  your  house- 
hold." 

"It's  right  neighborly  of  you,  Square,  to 
come  an'  say  so,"  remarked  Abner.  "  Won't 
you  set  down  ?  You  see,  my  son  Jeff's  jest 
come  home  from  the  war,  an'  the  house  bein' 
burnt,  an'  so  on,  we're  rather  upset  for  the 
minute." 

The  Squire  put  on  his  spectacles  and 
smiled  with  surprise  at  seeing  Jeff.  He 
shook  hands  with  him  warmly,  and  spoke 
with  what  we  felt  to  be  the  right  feeling 
about  that  missing  arm ;  but  he  could  not  sit 
down,  he  said.  The  cutter  was  waiting  for 
him,  and  he  must  hurry  back. 

"  I  am  glad,  however,"  he  added,  "  to  have 
been  the  first,  Mr.  Beech,  to  welcome  your 
brave  son  back,  and  to  express  to  you  the 
hope,  sir,  that  with  this  additional  link  of 
sympathy  between  us,  sir,  bygones  may  be 
allowed  to  become  bygones." 

"  I  don't  bear  no  ill  will,"  said  Abner, 
guardedly.  "  I  s'pose  in  the  long  run  folks 
act  pooty  close  to  about  what  they  think  is 


FINIS  193 

right.  I'm  willin'  to  give  'em  that  credit  — 
the  same  as  I  take  to  myself.  They  ain't 
been  much  disposition  to  give  me  that  credit, 
but  then,  as  our  school-ma'am  here  was  a 
sayin'  last  night,  people  've  been  a  good  deal 
worked  up  about  the  war  —  havin'  them  that's 
close  to  'em  right  down  in  the  thick  of  it  — 
an'  I  dessay  it  was  natural  enough  they  should 
git  hot  in  the  collar  about  it.  As  I  said  afore, 
I  don't  bear  no  ill  will  —  though  prob'ly  I'm 
entitled  to." 

The  Squire  shook  hands  with  Abner  again. 
"Your  sentiments,  Mr.  Beech,"  he  said,  in 
his  stateliest  manner,  "  do  credit  alike  to  your 
heart  and  your  head.  There  is  a  feeling,  sir, 
that  this  would  be  an  auspicious  occasion  for 
you  to  resume  sending  your  milk  to  the 
cheese-factory." 

Abner  pondered  the  suggestion  for  a 
moment.  "It  would  be  handier,"  he  said, 
slowly ;  "  but,  you  know,  I  ain't  goin'  to  eat 
no  humble  pie.  That  Rod  Bidwell  was 
downright  insultin'  to  my  man,  an'  me 
too—" 

"  It  was  all,  I  assure  you,  sir,  an  unfortu- 
nate misunderstanding,"  pursued  the  Squire, 
"and  is  now  buried  deep  in  oblivion.     And 


194  THE    COPPERHEAD 

it  is  further  suggested,  that,  when  you  have 
reached  that  stage  of  preparation  for  your 
new  house,  if  you  will  communicate  with  me, 
the  neighbors  will  be  glad  to  come  up  and 
extend  their  assistance  to  you  in  what  is  com- 
monly known  as  a  raising-bee.  They  will 
desire,  I  believe,  to  bring  with  them  their 
own  provisions.  And,  moreover,  Mr.  Beech" 
—  here  the  Squire  dropped  his  oratorical 
voice  and  stepped  close  to  the  farmer  —  "  if 
this  thing  has  cramped  you  any,  that  is  to 
say,  if  you  find  yourself  in  need  of  —  of  — 
any  accommodation  —  " 

"  No,  nothin'  o'  that  sort,"  said  Abner. 
He  stopped  at  that,  and  kept  silence  for  a 
little,  with  his  head  down  and  his  gaze  medi- 
tatively fixed  on  the  barn  floor.  At  last  he 
raised  his  face  and  spoke  again,  his  deep  voice 
shaking  a  little  in  spite  of  itself. 

"  What  you've  said,  Square,  an'  your  comin' 
here,  has  done  me  a  lot  o'  good.  It's  pooty 
nigh  wuth  bein'  burnt  out  for  —  to  have  this 
sort  o'  thing  come  on  behind  as  an  after-clap. 
Sometimes,  I  tell  you,  sir,  I've  despaired  o' 
the  republic.  I  admit  it,  though  it's  to  my 
shame.  I've  said  to  myself  that  when  Ameri- 
can citizens,  born  an'  raised  right  on  the  same 


FINIS  195 

hill-side,  got  to  behavin'  to  each  other  in  such 
an  all-fired  mean  an'  cantankerous  way,  why, 
the  hull  blamed  thing  wasn't  worth  tryin'  to 
save.  But  you  see  I  was  wrong  —  I  admit  I 
was  wrong.  It  was  jest  a  passin'  flurry  —  a 
kind  o'  snow-squall  in  hayin'  time.  All  the 
while,  right  down't  the  bottom,  their  hearts 
was  sound  an'  sweet  as  a  butter-nut.  It 
fetches  me  —  that  does  —  it  makes  me  prouder 
than  ever  I  was  before  in  all  my  born  days 
to  be  an  American — yes,  sir — that's  the 
way  I  —  I  feel  about  it." 

There  were  actually  tears  in  the  big 
farmer's  eyes,  and  he  got  out  those  finishing 
words  of  his  in  fragmentary  gulps.  None  of 
us  had  ever  seen  him  so  affected  before. 

After  the  Squire  had  shaken  hands  again 
and  started  off,  Abner  stood  at  the  open  door, 
looking  after  him,  then  gazing  in  a  comtem- 
plative  general  way  upon  all  out-doors.  The 
vivid  sunlight  reflected  up  from  the  melting 
snow  made  his  face  to  shine  as  if  from  an 
inner  radiance.  He  stood  still  and  looked 
across  the  yards  with  their  piles  of  wet  straw 
smoking  in  the  forenoon  heat,  and  the  black 
puddles  eating  into  the  snow  as  the  thaw 
went   on;   over   the  further  prospect,  made 


196  THE    COPPERHEAD 

weirdly  unfamiliar  by  the  disappearance  of 
the  big  old  farm-house  ;  down  the  long  broad 
sloping  hill-side  with  its  winding  road,  its 
checkered  irregular  patches  of  yellow  stubble 
and  stacked  fodder,  of  deep  umber  ploughed 
land  and  warm  gray  woodland,  all  pushing 
aside  their  premature  mantle  of  sparkling 
white,  and  the  scattered  homesteads  and  red 
barns  beyond  —  and  there  was  in  his  eyes  the 
far-away  look  of  one  who  saw  still  other 
things. 

He  turned  at  last  and  came  in,  walking 
over  to  where  Jeff  and  Esther  stood  hand  in 
hand  beside  the  bed  on  the  floor.  Old  Jee 
Hagadorn  was  sitting  up  now,  and  had  ex- 
changed some  words  with  the  couple. 

"  Well,  Brother  Hagadorn,"  said  the 
farmer,  "  I  hope  you're  feelin'  better." 

"  Yes,  a  good  deal  —  B  —  Brother  Beech, 
thank'ee,"  replied  the  cooper,  slowly  and 
with  hesitation. 

Abner  laid  a  fatherly  hand  on  Esther's 
shoulder  and  another  on  Jeff's.  A  smile 
began  to  steal  over  his  big  face,  broadening 
the  square  which  his  mouth  cut  down  into 
his  beard,  and  deepening  the  pleasant 
wrinkles  about  his   eyes.     He   called   M'rye 


FINIS  197 

over  to  the  group  with  beckoning  nod  of  the 
head. 

"  It's  jest  occurred  to  me,  mother,"  he  said, 
with  the  mock  gravity  of  tone  we  once  had 
known  so  well  and  of  late  had  heard  so  little 
—  "I  jest  be'n  thinkin'  we  might  'a'  killed 
two  birds  with  one  stun  while  the  Square 
was  up  here.  He's  justice  o'  the  peace,  you 
know  —  an'  they  say  them  kindo'  marriages 
turn  out  better'n  all  the  others." 

"  Go  'long  with  yeh !  "  said  M'rye,  viva- 
ciously. But  she  too  put  a  hand  on  Esther's 
other  shoulder. 

The  school-teacher  nestled  against  M'rye's 
side.  "  I  tell  you  what,"  she  said,  softly, 
"  if  Jeff  ever  turns  out  to  be  half  the  man  his 
father  is,  I'll  just  be  prouder  than  my  skin 
can  hold." 


THE   END 


J.  S.  Cushing-  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith. 
Boston,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


LO 


RARE  BOOK 
COLLECTION 


THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 

AT 

CHAPEL  HILL 

Wilmer 
469 


